Lately, it seemed that the iPod will be left alone with its click-wheel and all, maybe because all the fuss people are making about the imminent (so they say) launch of the iPhone. I suppose this was the main reason why nobody tried to make another clone of the successful iPod design, they were too busy thinking about the iPhone's release and about its possible design.

In my opinion, whatever the design will look like, Apple will surely sell enough devices to hit a top 10 position in the mobile phone manufacturers’ world mainly because they now how to promote their products: it doesn't matter if their product is more expensive than its direct competitors’ one, the main thing is that it looks better than all of them put together and that is what customers see first :) (let's not be unfair though, in the case of the iPod, besides the beauty of it, you also get sound quality beyond belief until its launch).

Sorry if I digressed and now, let us return to the subject of this article. Pantech is the one that thought of making some kind of an iPhone, before its actual release by Apple, and the result is the PG3600V handset that comes in a black colored case, to make a “I'm not an iPod after all” statement I presume, and it features an mp3 player that can play MP3, AAC and AAC+ file types, but it doesn't offer WMA support. Should it be because while “borrowing” from the iPod design, the guys at Pantech have indirectly implemented in their new handset's DNA the hate that Apple has for all that is Microsoft related? The Windows Media Audio file format in our case.

The device also sports Bluetooth A2DP surround sound connectivity so you can use any kind of wireless headset to listen to your favorite music without having to handle some kind of dangling cords around your neck (no risk of choking yourself to death when using this iPod-ish phone beauty). It also features a 1.3 megapixel digital camera that can zoom in or out in concordance with the rotation of the click-wheel and a bright TFT LCD display to see the snapshots of the moments in your life you don't want to forget.

Overall, this is quite an impressive device and even if it resembles the Apple iPod, they did a good job with the overall design (it's a pretty tricky thing to incorporate that click-wheel in a slider phone form-factor without ending with some weird looking handset) and the features are also very nice to look at while on paper. So, in conclusion, I think they ended up with a cool phone and from my point of view they did a very good job borrowing the click-wheel. We all want functionality don't we? Now will just have to wait and see what the users that will get it think about it, or maybe we'll give it a review sometime to see what this phone is capable of.

Oh, and I almost forgot. Don't be very anxious and calm down because you won't get your hands on it pretty soon. For now, the phone will be launched in Taiwan, let's all be happy for the Taiwanese people who get to use it first and let's hope they'll tell us how it feels to talk with your friends using an “iPod”.