People also tend to forget that it was incredibly refined already in v1. I remember hooking it up to my car and being super impressed that I could pick whether I wanted sound to go to the car, my phone, or my headphones. Each makes sense in a different context, but other products at the time assumed that as long as there was a BT connection available it should use that. They also clearly did some great usability work on touch targets. I could tap on links in web pages and it would do the right thing. Other phones, even if they had a decent browser (they didn’t), forced me to hunt for the magic touch target.

Blackberries were good at email, but otherwise they lost to Apple badly.

Refined yes, featureful no.

The fact that you could browse actual websites (sans Flash of course) was amazing.

WiFi and the companion iPod Touch made me feel it wasn't as much a phone as a goddmaned computer with a phone app that mostly didn't suck.

The text input took a while but I still charge up and unlock my OG iPhone and am amazed at how well it fares (yes, iOS3).

The original iPhone was revealed as three things: a phone, an iPod, and a revolutionary new browser. All three were true. I remember when I bought the first iPhone I was giddy how delightful Safari was, and it was the first smart phone to pass my “xkcd test” (could I figure out how to open a browser and type xkcd.com without getting forcibly corrected). It was also the best iPod and the first to introduce “visual voicemail”. It truly was revolutionary in visual and functional design.

No doubt, I was amazed when I first got my hands on one. The iphone got things right that had never been gotten before. But the fact remains that on the day it launched, there were other smartphones on the market that had more features. When the feature-sets overlapped, iphone was generally the clear winner, but if you tallied it all up, the iphone was clearly lacking a few obvious features that others had, such as the aforementioned third-party software, or even just the simple ability to copy-paste text (which didn't come to iphones until several iterations later as I recall.)

I'm curious when you say less functional than existing offerings you mean .... exactly what? Those java apps you could download from your cell phone carrier that ran incredibly slow? Or the robust ecosystem windows mobile <6 had at the time?.. Because Android wasn't out... I agree with foolfoolz, iphone raised the bar both functionally and visually, regardless of having a app store at launch.

> Or the robust ecosystem windows mobile <6 had at the time?

Huh? Windows CE and, later, Windows Mobile had quite a large number of apps for its era since the programming model was similar to desktop Windows (pre .NET) meaning that there was a ready-made base of developers for it. They weren't necessarily easy to find since the idea of an app store (and Apple/Google eating 30% of your revenue) didn't exist yet but they were there.

They had apps but the quality was low and prior to the Apple App Store’s standard terms discoverability was basically paying baksheesh to the the carriers – our clients were quoted a minimum of $50k per carrier just to be in the store, scaling up based on your perceived ability to pay.

There certainly where high quality applications for WinMo, and discovery was as simple as reading a forum or two. Sure, maybe not quite as easy as going to the app store and downloading some fake app that does absolutely nothing and steals your info, but it worked pretty well. And chances of the WinMo app being actually malicious were lower, too.,

Why do you say parenthetically pre .Net? I programmed ruggedized Windows Mobile devices around 2008 using both C++/MFC and .Net Compact Framework/Windows Forms and they were both just like programming on Windows.

The Palm/Treo app market was quite strong, I had several good and useful apps on my Treo 650 that integrated nicely with a desktop and made it a properly useful device. The app installation method was a bit primitive but there was absolutely a strong market for 3rd party apps.

hmmm - I have a blind spot for palm during that time, completely spaced them. I was a windows mobile power user 2003 thru version 5/6. I will take your word for it.

In an age before android or iphones, blackberry ruled the world. The iphone as it was released was a functional regression for blackberry power users. And it didn't catch on with that demographic until Apple iterated on the iphone to close the gap.

You are correct - I totally spaced the blackberry. I was focused on the app store comment. LOL them blackberry power users hung on for awhile huh?

Blackberry ruled the US. It was mostly unknown in the world.

Nitpicks aside, if Blackberry preceded the iphone only in America, it still preceded the iphone. Note that I never claimed that predecessors to the iphone, with more functionality than the iphone, were also more commercially successful in America, let alone worldwide. Claiming that would be ridiculous.

Americans have a blind spot when it comes to smartphones pre-iPhone, because Nokia wasn't such a big player on that side of the pond. The Symbian S60 ecosystem was fairly well-developed, certainly by the standards of the time.

Yeah I remember seeing a demo of a Psion from a SwissAir seatmate. It was quite awesome for year 2000.

Nah I was a big fan of s60 Had the birth control 3650 with multiplayer snake. That phone upped the game, but thought we were talking about design and functionality. I wouldn’t call the 3650 a jump in functionality besides it included one of the first cameras stateside .