Superior is in the mind of the beholder, I guess.

Betamax had better image quality, but lost out primarily because of an overly short tape length that ended up requiring two tapes for feature-length movies.

EVs lost out not to infrastructure, but to poor lead-acid battery life and range. Over a century later we're still working on that.

And the stylus didn't end because of a joke, it ended because using a stylus on a portable device is a two-handed operation. Touch is, in fact, the "superior" interface in that regard.

Microsoft's Home Screen looked cool... but people buy phones to actually do things, and it struggled to provide a competitive application ecosystem.

And I disagree with the Apple vs Google dichotomy. Samsung and all of the other Android phone makers have looked high and low trying to find a competitive advantage... and largely they've failed.

Feels more like a rant against maturing product categories, actually. Tech writers love to complain about that.

But I've also noticed that they usually can't come up with an example of what future "innovation" said phones are missing.

Guess the problem is harder than it looks.