People who used a blackberry can understand how big of a jump the iPhone was for mobile browsing.

TBF back then no site was optimized to be viewed on a small screen, only after the iPhone and then Android came along did we get "mobile-friendly" or even "mobile-first" sites...

That's not entirely true. WAP browsing was the norm for most mobile devices. The stuff we call "mobile-friendly" now is light years ahead of what we had then.

Fennec (Mozilla Firefox for Mobile) was already a thing before iPhone was released.

The distortion here is that capacitive touch took on with iPhone release. Which lead to a surge of websites supporting such (albeit usually optimized for iPhone/iOS + Safari).

No mainstream phone launched with Fennec. Safari on iPhone was a game changer when everyone else was used to WAP browsing which was all scaled down, text-based web pages.

Of course, but that doesn't mean Fennec wasn't miles ahead. I mean, the original iPhone didn't even have multitouch zoom. Innovation vs invention. People have rose-tinted glasses about the past. They forget the bad, only remember the good.

Sorry but you're wrong. It doesn't matter if Fennec was miles ahead if there was no device to use it on (unless you knew the magic incantations to get it working on one) and the original iPhone did have multitouch zoom too. Jobs demoed it on-stage.

Opera on Windows Mobile?

Sure, I just meant compared to what we have today.