Having browsed at 0 and seeing many items far more influential noted - I'd note that most of the items proposed hardly qualify as a gadget.

Aside from prototype nuclear weapons, I can't see a circumstance where I'd accept 'gadget' as a descriptive of an item which couldn't be held in the hand... "Hand me that gadget over there", pointing in the direction of a hair dryer / cell phone / power drill / etc, sounds reasonable to me, while "Haul that gadget over here", pointing at a chain engine hoist / deep freezer / electron microscope / etc, sounds bloody odd / incorrect.

None of this is to say that I agree with the iphone as a choice... I don't. I just don't think an airplane or printing press qualifies as a 'gadget'... A gun, however, might.

Not to be too picky, but initially (I was an early adopter, with the original iphone, within a very short time of its release) there wasn't the app support you describe. It had the apps it came with, and could access 'webapps' - javascript on webpages via bookmarks, more or less. There wasn't an app store, public sdk, etc. That all came later - at least several months, might've even been a hair over a year.

I've already replied with a list of phones which didn't suffer these problems... After looking at your links, both refer to the 5x. I wish you'd phrased your observation so it didn't appear as a blanket attack on google-made or google-engined phones; while it's precisely correct, it's deceptive.

List of phones I've owned which had no lag or locking up when trying to take pictures:

iphone (original)
iphone3g
(when the i3g died in a hurricane and itunes was still antiquated enough that new phone == paying for all apps / tunes over again, I made the switch...)
nexus 1
htc g2
htc evo3d
htc evo3gle (or whatever it was called... commonly called 'eagle')
sony psx phone (whatever that was called)
htc shift
nexus 4
nexus 5
nexus 6
blackberry priv

The sad part is, I know I've missed at least two phones in there. And those two, didn't have lag or lock up when using the camera either. I've never met anyone who complained of lag, or this lock-up-camera thing.