It was extremely popular brand in Europe for many years. At one time almost everybody had a good Nokia or Sony Ericsson. I saw Motorola Razr like one time in the wild.

Well, I speak from an American perspective and the Razr was everywhere, but according to Wikipedia their peak was around 10% market share. Nokia was much much more popular.

America was way behind at that point.

IIRC a combination of weird regional roaming agreements, odd incompatible networks and the sheer size of the country leading to lots of coverages blackspots meant that the US just didn't get widespread adoption of decent mobile tech.

Yeah, that makes the iPhone hype much more sensible. I remember it as very much underwhelming, I had a phone like that 2 years before it came out, and it had apps.

I had SE k800i in 2006. It had a Xenon flash and the photos it took we not surpassed by smartphones for a surprisingly long time, especially at night.