Pre-iPhone Nokias all had resistive touchscreens. Not a pleasant experience for pointing and dragging. Before 2007 no one was insane enough to put glass on a phone.
This. It's not the glass specifically (you can still buy cheap androids with polycarbonate screens), but the capacitative touchscreen, which is more expensive and requires a much fancier controller to read. But without it, either you have to use a stylus, which despite Samsung's belief hardly anyone wants, or press fairly hard. And you can't do multi-touch at all.
Capacitative touchscreen + "real" web browser (not WAP!) was the key capability of the iPhone. The fact that it subsumed the already successful iPod was a big benefit too.
> which despite Samsung's belief hardly anyone wants
Which is why nobody is buying ipad pros or surface pros and Wacom is bankrupt /s.
Having a pen in addition to capacitive touch is great. Having only a pen was not. Though the resistive screens in the Nokia N900 or the Nintendo DS for example were not bad.
First usable application of capacitive digitiser on the smartphone was done by HTC. Even before Touch, they tried to make WinMo operable without a stylus.
A big part of Iphone 1 UI was a direct copy of HTC designs.
