Even now it's stupid they don't offer keyboard filtering.

The original iPhone, and many versions after it, was probably 4 times smaller than the current phone.

Even on the current large iPhone screen the dropdown lists (instead of scroll wheels) are usually a pain to navigate because they are often a much smaller target and don't allow mistakes (you mis-click on an item, you have to open the dropdown again)

I agree on keyboard filtering though.

Yes it was. It required more interaction than necessary to select an item from a list, which is the definition of inefficiency. Why do you think they changed it.

Not only that, but the picker wheel only showed a few items, you had to scroll to see more than about 3 or 4 items. All this squashed into half the screen. Inefficient and poorly designed.

When selecting numbers on a date calendar, the wheel can be forgiven because you don't need to see the whole list to know the estimated position of your choice. But most select boxes on the web are NOT number pickers, but lists of words required to be read before a selection made. The old and now dead iOS select element wheel was a sorry piece of UX design indeed in most select box cases.