That's pretty subjective. At launch, the iPhone was a lot of fun to play with (cool UI and form factor). However - it was also extremely limited in what it could do vs many other smart phones at the time.
So based on what you wanted or needed to get done - many of the smart phones you want to put in the "sucked" category were actually much better.
Blackberry is dead
Treo's are dead
This is primarily what everyone had. The iPhone was light years ahead of the Treo... Blackberry was ahead for email and zero else.