Eep. Scrolling was through the tiny scrollbar on the right, and I'm left-handed to make it even more irritating to use. Closing a window with your finger required a fingernail in the corner (or stylus, add 2 seconds). It insisted on stuffing a Start Menu in there, with careful clickery required to not make mistakes. And a Windows Explorer, with tiny expand-contract [+] thingies. I forget most of the horror.
For others who forget, these were examples of the best apps at the time. Behold the menu bar for some apps, the scroll bar, tree menus (and tree folders, requiring stylii or fingernails), [x]-to-close, the button on the bottom that says "Up". You can see the iPhone was out, and some apps were already influenced by it.
My hardware had a slide-out keyboard. Sometimes the flip didn't flip, though, so you'd open and close it multiple times until it woke up. The phone was capable of connecting to the web, but that just generally brought misery. It could do video calls, which was theoretically pretty cool. We tried that once.
Version 5, that was. I think I'm going to put it in a fire, right now.
My goal was to add some value to the conversation, not convince you or others that you didn't like the phone. It's not about your opinion, it's about Apple and the state of the art at the time, and what they did to change it. If you have some relevant info about why it was great, paint that picture for other HN'ers who might not have used it.
Part of the price difference will be the cost of shipping and handling, customer service, warranties, etc, but I think it is reasonable to claim that at least $200 will remain after factoring in those. People do buy these phones, so there must be some $200 of value in an iPhone that is not attributable to its hardware. People will have different views on where that value is, but IMO, it is not unreasonable to assume half of it is in the iPhone UI.
BTW, I liked my WM5 phone.