Right, there was a lot of bending over carrier side riding on the waning but still strong "white earbud cables" ad image. Carriers were still dreaming of being

Right, there was a lot of bending over carrier side riding on the waning but still strong "white earbud cables" ad image. Carriers were still dreaming of being able to recreate the glory days of paid SMS I guess. The project that got us from zero cameras in phones to zero phones without cameras in what felt like weeks, MMS, was still pretending to not be quite dead yet. An interesting perspective. From that angle it looks very much like the "not a smartphone because no apps" wasn't Apple not being ready yet, but Apple deliberately pretending to get a foot in the door.