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I think the importance of users feedback and validation is often overrated.

If Steve Jobs asked people, if they want a phone with no keyboard and just a touchscreen, most of them would say no back then.

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When I was working for Motorola in 1997, I came up with an idea for something very much like the iPhone (although not as good and it required a stylus as I was thinking in terms of the functionality of the Palm Pilot). But the execution of the iPhone was light years ahead of what I dreamt up while working at Motorola (and since I was a contractor there, I never shared my brilliant idea with anyone who could have put it into development anyway). A phone with no keyboard and just a touchscreen could have been easily sold before the original demo. the difference is that what Apple came up with was far beyond what anyone had imagined.

Fortunately, I was an adult at the time the original iphone came out. (Although not in the US.) By then, market was already flooded with cheap Chinese phones with "touchscreen" which required a stylus. Apple, actually, was already pretty late to the game. Jobs' core innovation was the insistence on getting rid of the stylus.

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