Those were the Sony-Ericsson business-oriented smartphones from the early 21st century onwards until the arrival & massive consumer acceptance of the much less capable iPhone, which began the demise of the Sony & Ericsson partnership in recent years. Also the Motorolas.

It's nice not having iOS or Android on your phone.

With these vintage phones and previously free manufacturer software installed on the laptop or desktop, you have always gotten the full internet wherever you had cellular service from your provider. This was even before cellular providers became ISPs, and there were no data plans yet. No free minutes either, you paid by the minute, talk, text or analog data.

The earlier smartphones communicated with the laptop using the COM port which was still ubiquitous, or for wireless used infrared which became standard on most business laptops. This was still when very few students could afford laptops, as they were priced at twice the cost for half the performance, and none were yet designed to sell for under $1000. It was dial-up and had nothing to do with your cellular provider, you also needed an ISP of which AOL was a common business choice. These early Sony-Ericssons still contained an analog modem. The Motorolas also did, which I think were the biggest of the real smart phone vendors, at more attractive prices from more carriers.

You still had direct access to analog fax machines, up until the arrival of "free minutes plans". Shortly thereafter T-Mobile & AT&T disavowed all knowledge of and support for fax capability, but it still worked for years, until their network became more digital.
Real faxing was not intended to be part of the internet anyway, it was supposed to be much more secure and private than that. But that's been lost for years, you can't fax to or from a portable device to a landline without the internet any more, and a landline has the highest expectation of privacy by a wide margin.

Still, at least with Windows 98 up into Windows 8.1 you have always been able to do the portable email and browsing and the whole internet thing. Will be trying it with Windows 10 soon. Of course it's Bluetooth now or USB instead of infrared or COM port.

When the iPhone came out, besides the defects where you didn't have a forward-compatible Memory Stick or SD card socket, and it wasn't intended to bring internet access to a computer (not even a Mac), you couldn't even bring spare phone batteries.
Plus you could only get the internet where there was 2G, 3G, 4G coverage, which was still spotty and not nationwide, even if it was much faster.

Be careful what you settle for.

With the Sony-Ericssons and Motorolas you got the fast broadband where available, otherwise for early iPhones most of the USA was dead to the internet.
And of course for the PC or Mac the phones are bootable USB mass storage devices once you properly format the phone's Memory Sticks and install DOS, Windows, or Linux on them.

It has always made sense to some operators for the phone to be the accessory to the traditional laptop. With a pile of charged batteries you can be completely wireless and/or without other power for a long time, depending only on coverage from your own "private" cellular account for communication.

After all, IIRC that was the purpose of a "smart phone" to begin with, portable internet, with at least a small screen and keyboard to work with whenever you can't plug it into a real one.

Then some Dells came along with a SIM card socket.

For so many consumers, the arrival of the iPhone meant the beginning of portable internet capability, when it had actually been very well developed previously, especially considering the weaker performance of the underlying network & electronics at the time of development.
To others, a milestone beyond which portable internet capabilities might never be as worthwhile as was previously dreamed possible.