The CTIA Wireless trade show is underway in Las Vegas, Nev. If you’re not sure what CTIA is, you’re not alone, but there’s a decent chance that the cell phone you carry with you now was once on display at the show. CTIA is the wireless phone industry association.

So what’s up at this year’s show? Big surprise: smartphones. Oh, wait, that’s no surprise. CNET’s Kent German said that Samsung is going to release a new version of the Instinct, the S30. There aren’t many changes for the Sprint touch screen phone, but it appears that Samsung will make it more possible for developers to write software for the machine, which may make it more appealing to customers who want something more like the Apple iPhone or HTC G1 (based on the Google Android operating system)*.

Speaking of HTC, they have a pretty nifty-looking machine on exhibit as well. Theirs is called the Snap. As Ginny Mies of PC World points out, it looks a lot like a BlackBerry. It runs on Windows Mobile, but the Snap has Inner Circle, a feature that lets you program a hotkey to prioritize e-mail messages from people you designate as high priority.

*Oh yeah, by the way, BlackBerry has opened its own application store called the BlackBerry App World, Electronista reported this morning. There’ll be lots more later, of course, but there’s already a lot now. IM clients, social networking, news, entertainment and more already await the CrackBerry-addicted legions. And as Marguerite Reardon announced from CNET, QuickPlay will bring television to the even-smaller screen with a new application called Primetime2Go.

It would seem the lines between enterprise smartphones (BlackBerrys) and consumer products (iPhones/G1s) are blurring as the applications narrow the gap between the two.

Lots of slider phones this year. Take a look at Kent German’s photo gallery of new CTIA releases for some pretty nifty-looking machines.

Those are only a few of the stories coming out of the conference right now. And look for an announcement from Palm on the pricing and availability of their much-talked-about new smartphone, the Pre.

Dial up these great articles for more information:

How Cell Phones Work
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How a BlackBerry Works