When we talked about the idea of clones being good for competition, we meant using existing products for inspiration, giving buyers more options and driving down prices for better mobile phones.

This is not what we had in mind.

I don’t know enough about Digitalrise to call them second or third rate, but I do know about Motorola, Samsung, Nokia and Sony Ericsson. The HiPhone, the apparent King of iPhone Clones embarrasses them all.

How can a company come out of no where and create a device that virtually mimics the iPhone in every aspect? In addition, depending on whom you ask the HiPhone makes a few improvements.

3.5-inch touchscreen, Bluetooth, 2 megapixel camera, quad band, video recording capability and plays just about every media format you throw at it. Add the removable battery and that it is unlocked and you have a great mobile phone.

Unfortunately, it is a foreign knock off. There is no word on storage capacity, but it does take TF cards. Luckily, for Apple and others the makers of the Digitalrise HiPhone D800i did not make a unique handset.

Talk about a missed opportunity.

However, the question remains. If Digitalrise can step up and produce the D800i HiPhone, when will Palm, RIM, Samsung, Motorola and others step up and deliver for the US market?