At that time there genuinely weren't a lot of more budget-minded Android phones. It was all just to shoot out of everyone trying to make a phone. For the first couple years most of the competition was like all the manufacturers just throwing random models and form factors at the wall, using the same two processors as those were the only processors for that year. So it's mostly weird little HTC phones versus whatever nine different phone Samsung was launching this month versus the current Droid du jour vs some weird slider shit from pantech.

It was very common for manufacturers to launch numerous different devices on different carriers with different form factors, but for all of the underlying hardware hiding behind the screen to be exactly the same thing. For example, in 2010 and 2011, Samsung released over a dozen different models of the Galaxy S, all with different names, different designs, and different feature sets, despite each and every one of these being the same phone under the hood. Same processor, same ram, same motherboard. They did the same thing with the S II.

The Galaxy S3 was basically the first time that a manufacturer other than Apple decided to just make all of their flagship phone units for one year just be the same phone. That's why everyone still remembers exactly what that phone looks like, but would no longer be able to pick out an S1 or S2 from a lineup, likely even if it was one that they owned at that time.