The faster approvals were because of prioritisation of the government's during a pandemic and nearly flawless execution of Pfizer.
But doing something faster doesn't mean it's new. In many cases it means you made your existing processes more efficient. Not changed them.
You are also changing your point. You said Biontech did almost nothing and compared it to a iphone app, lol. They could have chosen someone else and there aren't many that failed approvals. ( Except if you count Russia). But as mentioned, Pfizer was the best choice.
The largest difference in making it faster was an in-place term that allowed simultaneous clinical trials, which was unique and funded by the government due to extra costs and risks for pharma. This was not due to Pfizer and shouldn't be attributed to them as you are trying too.
Without that regulation it would have taken multiple years like before.
The government's also quickened feedback from months to weeks, which was an additional efficiency improvement.
If you're "in the know", you sure are forgetting the most important "details" for cutting the duration till approval vs. the past.
In the context of this article, it's important to note that the first authorized vaccine was not funded by the program.
https://www.pfizer.com/news/articles/shot_of_a_lifetime_how_...
Having a promising vaccine is about 5% of the work and cost to get it into people.
And to say getting a brand new vaccine scaled up and approved in record time is “not something new” tells me you aren’t that close to the process.
There were a million ways the process could have failed (see J&J, AZ screw ups).
Pfizer pulled it off almost flawlessly. That’s never been done before.