My old boss would always buy the new IPhone the day it came out and brag about features and a lot of the times I would be scratching my head being like how is that different then what I have on my 4 year old android Galaxy 6??
Android was a poor comparison when iPhone first released. I had one of them. It was neat because it was new, but realistically it was a piece of shit compared to the iPhone. I'm no Apple fan boy, but they genuinely changed the world in many ways
When iPhone first released... it was a piece of shit compared to the HTC Dream with Android. The main improvement Apple did, was removing the keyboard.
I miss them so much. Those, and IR transmitters being common, That's a major one to me. Almost 20 years ago, I had control of every single T.V, DVD player, VCR, etc. That came my way thanks to the palm TX, it had IR and a nice little app where you'd just choose the make/model of the device you're trying to control and bam, your screen became the remote you needed. Iirc the buttons also could be used so you didn't necessarily have to do everything touch screen.
Now on my super fancy modern smart phone I couldn't dream of doing that. Hell, I even struggle to use it as a remote for my Roku because I use my device as a hotspot and Roku requires both devices be on the same network. Why can't we figure out how to do what we did so easily 2 decades ago?!
I remember having to jailbreak my iPhone 3GS to have swipe down toggles we now know as normal today. It was called SB settings from cydia. I'm pretty sure this was also standard on Android. And file manager.
Android was not aimed at blackberry. It was to be a completely new phone OS from the ground up and add extensive capabilities to the phone world over what the blackberry (the most popular phone at the time) could. Yes the G1 had a similar form factor to the most popular phone at the time and it wasn't even the only form. The phone in the picture was from prototype stage and never shipped in that form factor. The shipping go had a screen and button under it. The screen slid sideways to reveal a keyboard. The Motorola droid was the most popular android phone when they actually shipped. I had a droid and a coworker had a G1. Development problems and companies scared to gamble on a radical new product delayed Androids launch behind iPhones. Apple did a fantastic job of developing the iPhone in secret, knowing the Android was coming.