> with touchscreens before the iPhone,
> but they were all using a stylus
The LG Prada was the first capacitive touchscreen phone and was on sale before the iPhone. Technically its specs were underwhelming, but it was the pioneer of finger-UI.
The first iPhone had a 320x480 screen and could only use web sites that had a mobile version.
I figured that access to the entire web was a killer feature that would let the clunkier stylus phones compete successfully with an iPhone. Not a prediction that aged well.
That's just totally wrong. In fact, IIRC the original iPhone announcement showed a visit to the NY Times website to show how you could scroll around and zoom "full screen" websites.
If anything, the ability to navigate "desktop" sites on the iPhone was much better than other phones because those other versions of "full web browser" were clunky incarnations that made it difficult to zoom in and scroll around. It was pinch and double tap to zoom, and finger-on-screen to scroll that made browsing sites on the "normal" web much better than anything else at the time.
I think that feature made a huge impact on usability of desktop websites on the iPhone.