Couldn’t agree more. Those amalgam windows mobile devices were an interesting for the time, but hellish experience imho.

i don't understand this take at all. what did the iphone do that the existing devices did not do?

Multitouch

thats certainly a nicer input method, but is that what you're referring to when you say its an entirely different product?

Wait, were you not there? Did you not see how much the world changed pre vs post iPhone? In 2007 some nerds failed to see the forest for the trees and bitched about MMS but we have 2 decades of hindsight so let’s not. Why are we having this discussion