Not really. There was a way of slab typed smart phones with capacitance touch screen windows mobile devices and they were more capable than the iPhone with on board GPS, etc. but they didn’t have an integrated App Store, which was the key to customer retention. The first iPhones didn’t have GPS and so the map app wasn’t quiet as capable as the other high end smart phones in the market as it couldn’t do directions properly. It had the best web browser, though.

Every other model of high end smart phones quickly adopted the App Store model since it was such an obviously thing to install application directly to the device, but up until it was a major missing feature. All phones at the time required a computer tethered to do the purchase and installation.

With the App Store the age of phones needing full general purpose computers was coming to an end. It was a whole cultural shift in software

Later they started the iCloud sync so backups could be done ‘in the field’ as well.

I recall getting apps on my Blackberry and Treo before iPhone existed.