I'm not saying it is all about the hardware. I don't think the iPhone experience was revolutionary either.

Nokia tanked due to very, very poor management and branding. Internal competition between engineering units and tens of handsets with overlapping features made the brand slowly sink into the mire.

When thinking about the iPhone, remember there was no app store for over a year, and other platforms had had one since 05 or before.

Apple got a lot of stuff right, they released a great product. But it wasn't the huge leap forward people like to present and I often wonder if the perception that it was such a leap forward comes from the state of the US market at the time, not the world market (particularly Europe).

It was the first touch-first mobile OS built from the ground up to accommodate gestures. At the time, the limited touch screen phones available had an awkward stylus. Then they packed in GPS with Google Maps, accelerometer, double-sided camera, iTunes access, unlimited data, visual voicemail, etc. And Apple's app store was the first one that didn't suck. The few that had app stores did not have robust SDKs with tooling for building apps, you had to use Java VM and go through an arduous submission process to get your app on any other phone. Apple streamlined it, made it simple, and completely dominated the industry for a reason. The iPhone was clearly revolutionary, and a 10X improvement over any other phone on the market to that point.