Yes, clearly I am exaggerating. the 9290 doesn't even have EDGE, so there really isn't a comparison. (I have one on my desk right now, actually. I find the phone aesthetically appealing, which probably says a lot about why I don't "get" the iphone. [1] but without EDGE, at least, it's not particularly practical. The intent of the designers was that you would do dialup, but something changed in the GSM protocol so dialup no longer works, making the phone nothing but a giant sms device and decent offline (and thus obsolete) PDA.

(as an aside, I think the newton is interesting because if it's handwriting recognition was good enough, we'd be seeing handwriting recognition as a dominant input method for PDAs today. The thing is, it wasn't, and by now, even if someone comes up with absolutely perfect handwriting recognition software, too many of us have grown up not knowing how to write. the time when handwriting recognition could have worked is over.)

However, the 9500 was released in '04, and I think it can reasonably be argued that it is as 'advanced' as the first generation iphone. It doesn't have 3g, but neither did the first iphone. it does have wifi, edge, and a /keyboard/ making it a much more useful device, imho, than the iphone. I understand that the keyboard vs. touchscreen debate is subjective, and probably has more to do with what you are used to than anything else, but aside from the touchscreen, I'm not sure how else the iphone is more 'advanced' than the communicator 9500.

Now, if you want to compare modern devices, check out the n900. it's pretty slick. it's got a touchscreen and a keyboard, and the screen is absolutely beautiful, even in full sunlight. Under the covers, it's linux, and it's sold unlocked, so you can play with it. The maemo linux stuff is pretty close to regular linux, so you have a chance of understanding it too. Again, the apple software is better /if it does what you want/ while the nokia hardware is clearly superior, and the nokia software allows you to do exactly what you want /if you know how/.

I'm not saying the iphone is bad- If you have the same needs that apple had in mind when they designed it, it's a really great phone. But I think what they took out was probably more important to that than what they put in. As far as I can tell, apple didn't do anything particularly innovative in terms of features or technology, but they certainly made a lot of users happy. My belief is that part of their success was that they made the interface /just right/ for a certain class of users, by removing the sort of features those users don't want. (unfortunately, I don't belong to that class of users.)

Now, previous nokia communicators were status symbols in other parts of the world, but here, they never were. The iphone was the first smartphone to impact your image positively in the US. I'm the last person you should ask as to why that is, but I will give you my opinion anyhow: the Iphone was the first smart phone that cool people could effectively use.

[1] the thing is big and blocky. It looks as tough as it is. You can drop it, throw it, stick it in your pocket with your keys, and assuming your pockets are large enough to handle it, there's not a problem. I like clamshell designs for this reason.