The original iPhone did not have a 3g radio. If you want to make the argument that your 2G device that performed at about the same or lesser speed than a 56k modem as compared to a 3G device that worked at speeds comparable to DSL or cable modems of the time period... I find that quite amusing and revealing. You are getting into what most people would consider fantasy land however. Can your original iPhone tether to a computer? I don't think so! LOL!!!
And no; you don't need the stylus to use the PPC-6700 effectively. I am glad that your iPhone is still working. How did you replace the battery? Did you send it in before Apple stopped servicing them? LOL!!!
Yours has just 64MB of RAM. . . compared to 128MB of RAM. Yours had only 128Megabytes of storage to which you could add a 32Megabyte card. The iPhone came with 8 to 16Gigabytes
Either you are just making stuff up now, or you don't know the specs on the PPC-6700 or the original iPhone. The original iPhone came with either 4GBs or 8GBs, 16GBs was not available until the 3G model was released. The mini-SD card that came with my PPC-6700 was 1GB which I upgraded to 2GBs and later to 4GBs. It came with 128 MB (Flash memory) built in, and 64 MB Ram.
Of coarse the camera in the iPhone had a better sensor; it was after all released years after the PPC-6700. Other than claiming the PPC-6700 which was released years before the iPhone was a toy in comparison... You still haven't told me anything that the iPhone would do that the PPC-6700 would not. The display on the PPC-6700 can zoom in and out, move side to side and up and down, all without the aid of a stylus.
Read what I said. . . it's still working on its original battery eight years later, and it holds 80% of its original charge. Must be a fluke, right? It was used continuously by my ex-wife since I handed it to my daughter and then she handed it to her, probably about four years ago. . . and its been working ever since. Now being used as an iPod touch, still on the original battery.
I have had friends who had those resistance touch phones and yes, you could use them sorta without the stylus. I had one myself back before the iPhone came out. But you could NOT use them accurately. "I also found that the 6700 can not be used without the stylus." — Source Technology Evangelist review of the PPC6700. That is why they came with a stylus. Note I said accurately. . . and that's why your phone has that little joy stick doohickey. . . to move the cursor around the screen because you cannot select anything with any accuracy.
The original iPhone came with 4GB, 8GBs or 16GBs. . . which shows YOU don't know what you are talking about. I had the 8GB and wished at times I had opted for the 16. The 4GB was dropped after just three months of availability as being too limiting. Sorry you are just wrong on that. I looked up the specifications on your PPC-6700 and took them from the manufacturers website specifications page. They are accurate. Again, if you think I am wrong, take it up with the maker.
The memory capacity I used for the SD card was based on a contemporary ad for additional memory attached to PPC-6700 and the capacities offered were 16MG and 32MBs. Generally phones of that period, as well as digital cameras did not handle large capacity SD cards well. If yours does, bully for it. . . I just doubt it does. A 1GB card would have been fairly expensive in 2005, IIRC. I told you what amount of RAM and storage it came with. . .
You cannot see an entire webpage and in fact, you do not get to a genuine desktop webpage with your browser on your phone. . . you get MOBILE WEB and that's it. . . and then on your small screen you scroll around even that.
Where's the GPS? Visual Voice Mail? Motion sensors? Compass? I said nothing about the photo resolution between the two phones. . . Your phone is just a feature phone. . . the reviews are really nothing to rave about. Try reading the ones i've linked to.
EDGE did not operate at the speed of a 56K modem. Edge was 296 Kilobits per second. Not fast, but it was about six time faster than the 48bits per second typically achieved with a 56K modem. 95% of AT&T's network at that time was 2G EDGE so there was no point in selling phones that were any faster and in fact most phones were operating at 2G speeds in any case on all networks. Verizon started building out 3G and when AT&T's 3G reached 15% 3G saturation, Apple released the iPhone 3G which could finally take advantage of the faster data speeds. Until then, there really was not much point. There was nowhere near the number of customers who could use 3G speeds. 90% of the phones AT&T sold could not do 3G either. . . and neither could 90% of the phones that Verizon sold. 3G phones cost more and the carriers charged more to use the 3G signals for a while. Good thing that didn't last.
There was less than a 1% build out of 3G in 2005. In fact, when your phone was released in 2005, CDMA was only live in the San Francisco Bay area. . . whoopdeedoo.