I feel like the prevailing sentiment in 2007 was that most everything Apple chose to include in the iPhone, they executed well. It wasn't all that buggy at launch. However, there was a lot of very valid criticism of it--mostly that it had many glaring omissions -- 3G, copy/paste, ability to turn off autocomplete so you can type in other languages, etc.

This has gone on to be the core of the Apple mobile strategy--they don't worry about being first to market with every feature, rather the biggest concern is not to ship buggy/unreliable stuff that doesn't deliver on its promises. If at all possible.

This is also the major disadvantage for anyone new coming into this space.

Apple got to launch their incomplete-but-solid product and then spend a year or two refining it and incrementally adding features. That's the advantage of redefining/creating the market you launch in though, it doesn't extend to anyone else.

For anyone trying to compete with them now, they have to hit the ground running with a comparable-or-better feature set (which I assume is why Android vendors make so much fuss about Flash) _and_ comparable polish.

Same here. I had the original 2G iPHone and its was absolutely amazing. It's hard to remember the state of cell phones back then anymore, but it was revolutionary imo and worked great from day one.