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It's a measure of our susceptibility to hype that many of us have forgotten that it wasn't Apple that introduced the first touch-screen cellphone (the iPhone), but LG (the Prada).

That's important only to those who equate first with best; for them, LG Canada launched its new touch-screen phones using an Adam-and-Eve theme, complete with a live snake, to cock a snoot at Apple, which won't launch an iPhone in Canada until July.

LG's three new phones —the Vu, the Vantage and the Venus — not only represent LG's second wave of touch-screen phones in Canada, but all are third-generation cellphones working on the high-speed EVDO and HSPA data streams.

They have also been released to Canada's three largest cellphone companies; Telus is offering the Venus, Bell has nabbed the Vantage and Rogers has the Vu. Of the three, Rogers' Vu is the first full touch-screen phone we've seen; Bell's Vantage offers a choice between touch-screen dialling and a physical keypad and Telus' Venus offers two screens, the lower is a touch screen, as well as a physical keypad.

All of which proves that touch-screen phones are really hot consumer items. But is the touch screen enough to sell the LG series?

Like Apple, LG is wrestling with the problem of size. While public demand places tremendous pressure on a feature that at some point will become too small for the fingers of most adults and even some children. Apple solved the problem by making its screen larger, and outfitted it with larger icons and controls; it even offers a feature that allows users to tilt the screen sideways, an aspect that makes it easier to read data such as e-mail and browser screens.

LG's Vu does something like that, but rather than allowing a user to tilt the phone horizontally or vertically, it automatically does so when executing functions such as e-mail, for which it offers the user a virtual QWERTY keyboard. The Venus and Vantage push the user toward the physical keypad for typing, which is revealed when the screen slides out from over the base of the phone, and which some people find fabulously easy and others curse as the work of the devil. You can put two-thumbed BlackBerry users in the latter category.

Along the same vein, LG has also enlarged a number of icons for those whose fingers do not come to a point, and made them very attractive in a vivid-colours-against-black sort of way.

Because touch screens offer no feedback — unlike ordinary landline phones, which beep every time you press any key — LG has also dipped into haptic technology, which makes the cellphone shudder briefly every time a key is pressed. The technology here was licensed from a company called Immersion Corp., and goes by the annoying trademark name of VibeTonz.

Haptics — an expensive word that just means tactile feedback — is a welcome feature here, and it underlines the basic human need for reassurance that one is actually doing something in the digital world, which can easily distance users from what they're doing. Its necessity is an important lesson for high-tech designers to heed.

The size of the various screens shows some differences, but in the end all are configured differently and end up being about the same. The Vu, for instance, is 2.8 inches at a resolution of 176 by 220 pixels, and uses the wide screen for media viewing when in the tilted position. The Vantage is also 2.8 inches with wide screen, but its resolution is 400 by 240 pixels, and also uses the side screen for media viewing. Finally, the Venus has two screens — the upper is 2.2 inches at a resolution of 320 by 240 pixels, and the lower at 1.5 inches at 176 by 240 pixels resolution. When all the comparisons settle down it is revealed that the Vantage has the largest number display, which is good news for those with weaker eyes.

All this might make for a difficult buying decision. People who might want their cellphones to double as MP3 and movie players will be happy with any of this series of phones, but those with great demands for music might want to aim for the Venus. Like the Vu and the Vantage, the Venus has a slot for a MicroSD flash-memory card, but it can handle a card up to 8 gigabytes in size.

The extra 4 GB on the MicroSD card also makes the Venus double up as a data storage device. The Venus also offers more controls for creating and managing playlists. All three phones support Bluetooth wireless headsets; the Venus and VU offer a stereo connection, while the Vantage offers monaural only.

But if the Venus leans heavily on MP3 playing, it comes up short on instant messaging. All three offer cellphone-to-cellphone texting, although the Vu and the Vantage are the only phones that offer Windows Live Messenger, the IM client that most Canadians favour, with the VU adding Yahoo Messenger.

All three cellphones have a built-in 2-megapixel camera/camcorder with zoom and brightness controls, and all three offer picture and video messaging.

Many of these differences are marginal, built for the individual taste in things such as text size and keyboard input. But their major differences lie in the features offered by the individual service providers.

Rogers, for instance, sweetens the Vu with offerings from YouTube, radio, mobile TV, and access to the Rogers Zone for downloadable games, ring tones, applications and images.

Telus says its Venus is ready for mobile radio, TV and music (when they become available); text, picture and video messaging from phone to phone or to e-mail; downloadable images and ring tones.

For its part, Bell says its Vantage is ready for downloadable full-length movies, Sirius mobile radio and TV (when they become available), and the ability to use the Vantage as a wireless modem. Bell is also offering a global positioning system with the Telenav navigator.

Although all three work on high-speed data links, there can be some confusion about true speeds. Theoretically, the EVDO and HSPA are capable of impressive speeds; most EVDO nets operate between 2.4 and 3.1 megabits per second; HSPA (or HSDPA, as it is often called), is cited as having a throughput of 7.2 Mbit/s, but is quite often capped at about 3.1 to regulate a carrier's data traffic. All of which means the three phones exchange data with little difference in speed.

When you put the Vu, Vantage and Venus side by side, it's hard to figure out exactly what market LG was going for when it produced them; the most likely explanation is the each was made according to the demands put forward by the three carriers. Other than that, their differences are slight, more a matter of personal taste. On the whole, however, it must be said that there's something very attractive about the Vu, with its super-clean appearance with all of three tiny buttons on the front.