That is a fair assessment. I think the part that can really be attributed to Apple is the hardware accelerated, fluid, instantaneous and very polished interface

That is a fair assessment. I think the part that can really be attributed to Apple is the hardware accelerated, fluid, instantaneous and very polished interface with touch gestures . It's not any one UI component or gesture in particular but the beautiful integration of all of them together. The other thing that iPhone had going for it was the iTunes integration that would save you from having to buy an iPod. This brought a lot of monetary value. For the rest, I remember during the first iPhone reveal thinking it was a more polished, better funded version of the openMoko phone. ( https://www.google.ca/search?q=openmoko&safe=off&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ei=CCvMUby-E4H3ygHLtIH4DQ&ved=0CAkQ_AUoAQ&biw=1157&bih=577 https://www.google.ca/search?q=openmoko&safe=off&source=lnms... ) openMoko was an open source, volunteer made project. One thing openMoko had for it was their plan for promoting third party native apps from the get go, whereas Apple blocked them for almost a year. In a 2006 article, a few months prior to the iPhone reveal we get about openMoko: "The Neo1973 is based on a Samsung S3C2410 SoC (system-on-chip) application processor, powered by an ARM9 core. It will have 128MB of RAM, and 64MB of flash, along with an upgradable 64MB MicroSD card. Typical of Chinese phone designs, the Neo1973 sports a touchscreen, rather than a keypad -- in this case, an ultra-high resolution 2.8-inch VGA (640 x 480) touchscreen. "Maps look stunning on this screen," Moss-Pultz said. The phone features an A-GPS (assisted GPS) receiver module connected to the application processor via a pair of UARTs. The commercial module has a closed design, but the API is apparently open. Similarly, the phone's quad-band GSM/GPRS module, built by FIC, runs the proprietary Nucleus OS on a Texas Instruments baseband powered by an ARM7 core. It communicates with Linux over a serial port, using standard "AT" modem commands. The Neo1973 will charge when connected to a PC via USB. It will also support USB network emulation, and will be capable of routing a connected PC to the Internet, via its GPRS data connection. [...] Moss-Pultz adds, "Applications are the ringtones of the future." [...] As for additional software components, Moss-Pultz admits, "Quite a lot is there, and quite a lot is not there. We're hoping to change this." In addition to a dialer, phonebook, media player, and application manager, the stack will likely include the Minimo browser [...] He adds, "Mobile phones are the PCs of the 21st century, in terms of processing power and broadband network access. "