I don't know anyone personally who thought the original iPhone was anything less than The Jesus Phone.
This has gone on to be the core of the Apple mobile strategy--they don't worry about being first to market with every feature, rather the biggest concern is not to ship buggy/unreliable stuff that doesn't deliver on its promises. If at all possible.
Apple got to launch their incomplete-but-solid product and then spend a year or two refining it and incrementally adding features. That's the advantage of redefining/creating the market you launch in though, it doesn't extend to anyone else.
For anyone trying to compete with them now, they have to hit the ground running with a comparable-or-better feature set (which I assume is why Android vendors make so much fuss about Flash) _and_ comparable polish.