That's revisionist. People tend to forget that when the iphone was released it had no appstore and Apple was telling people to develop webapps. This was less functional than existing offerings on the market, but it sure looked and felt better.
Blackberries were good at email, but otherwise they lost to Apple badly.
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).
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.