They're still bad phones - you can't answer or dial them without looking. It's just that they're far more useful as tiny internet tablets and people have in many cases gradually moved to text chat over voice.
... How often did you dial something without looking before? You probably had a handful of numbers memorized. Otherwise, you needed to look up the number in a phone book or address book. Perhaps you memorized numbers for speed dial?
Now you can dial by talking to you phone if you'd like, so long as you have the person's number in your phone's computer. You can often dial a company directly from their page or from the phonebook... which is online.
And finally: Of course people have gradually moved to text. Voice is often not needed, and I would rather not stop everything to talk to most people.
Now you can dial by talking to you phone if you'd like
The Nokia 3310, from 2000, already had voice dialing. And while the recognition may not have been as good (I frankly can't remember), it certainly didn't take the time that my current cheap Android takes to even start listening.
It worked good enough. I pressed a button and said Pizza and it immediately called my local pizzeria. For some reason I’ve never got that to work smoothly with Siri.
I never said "all smart devices". I was obviously implying some smart devices for some use-cases. A bluetooth connected water bottle is well executed, but poorly ideated.