One thing the N95 and almost every other phone back then didn't have was a decent 3D accelerator like the PowerVR chipsets in the first iPhones. So ya, it's UI

One thing the N95 and almost every other phone back then didn't have was a decent 3D accelerator like the PowerVR chipsets in the first iPhones. So ya, it's UI, but most other phones were physically incapable of translating touch events into 60fps graphics like the smooth scrolling lists or mobile Safari's zooming interface. Phones that did have PowerVR or something equivalent at the time didn't have a 3D accelerated double buffered GUI baked into the OS like what Apple had already developed for OS X.