I think, that you didn’t see it in person was the reason you didn’t expect it to be a success. The 3G had 3G, but otherwise same hardware specs as the original

I think, that you didn’t see it in person was the reason you didn’t expect it to be a success. The 3G had 3G, but otherwise same hardware specs as the original. What sold me was that Apple got the UI right (“smooth as butter”), the webbrowser and email actually worked, and jailbroken it was almost Unix in your pocket! It really felt like a phone with so much potential and a far ahead of anything I had seen. The things you mention were just a matter of software updates. Btw. 3G and App Store both came out in 2008.