Those comments about the iPhone were correct: the original iPhone sucked at most of the things it set out to do even in comparison to many of the other devices at the time, and was really only very popular among hardcore fans of Apple. The iPhone 3G and then the iPhone 3GS (and possibly even more importantly, iPhoneOS 2.x and iOS 3.x) were really what started to make the device worthwhile. You can't judge a product based on some concept of the potential the product line might have based on judgements of the team and their plans: the comment you are responding to even says quite specifically "if it were released tomorrow"; if nothing else, we can assume Google also believes this, or they may have already released it ;P.