Well that's now more a question of personal bias / preference than something that can be defined as cold, hard fact.

What worked for you might not have been someone else's preferred method of using a smart phone. As well polished as the iPhone was, I found many of its design implimentations worked against the way I liked to use a smart phone. And I think the fact that Symbian (amongst others) outsold iOS for the first few years of the iPhone's life would suggest that I wasn't alone.

So I think even by that measure, it's still unfair to exclude other handsets of the same generation which were just as popular.

But then I guess history is written by the victors, not the other pioneers who've since fallen by the wayside.