iPhone wasnt world changing? I mean sure, you could make the argument that if it wasnt Apple with the iPhone it would have been someone else, but it's undeniably daft to think that the iPhone didn't lead to a complete change in not only consumer electronics (mobile phones), but also so many services around it.
It's well documented that Android was going to be Blackberry-ish, then they pivoted to be iPhone-ish after the original iPhone announcement. Think the App Store and things like Uber, which exist primarily as mobile apps.
The iPhone broke the carrier's backs. Before the iPhone the carrier was the customer, not you. They dictated features. They had final approval over the awful Java applets on phones. They also set the app prices and took a huge cut.
Very rarely is a new technology useful in abstract; the inventor of the steering wheel made a contribution but without the rest of the car it is meaningless.
Touch screens existed, sure. There were one or two largish screen phones, sure. Smartphones existed (all using keyboards and styluses). OS X and Safari existed. But no one had put it all together into a single device, nor had anyone created a sensible UI design language to take advantage of things like multitouch.
You're basically saying Dropbox is garbage because rsync/SMB/NFS/FTP existed. Or Uber/Lyft are garbage because Taxis existed. Yes there are some superficial similarities but it turns out the details make a massive world of difference and it is intellectually dishonest to be so dismissive.
I had read they had a "Dream" android phone prototype they were working on that was blackberry like [1]. There was also rumored to be a second one that was more iPhone like slated for down the line, but when the Apple demo happened Google immediately scrapped their blackberry like phone and the second one became the first.
If you walk through the new London Google office by kings cross, you can see the original android phone right by their restaurant. It looked just like a blackberry / Nokia E62..
It's well documented that Android was going to be Blackberry-ish, then they pivoted to be iPhone-ish after the original iPhone announcement. Think the App Store and things like Uber, which exist primarily as mobile apps.