That puts it in the same price category as: Palm Pilot, Blackberry Curve and Nokia N95, among many many others.
Honestly, I don't understand why you would buy these when there are a lot of established professional phone companies offering better phones at a cheaper price.
The end product experience doesn't always correlate to existing metrics of quality.
Many people didn't see how iPhone was better than its competitors at first either, mostly because they were focused on the things the competitors emphasized and dismissive about what Apple brought to the table. Until, of course, those things because all any company was trying to deliver.