I don’t really think so. Google took another two years to release the HTC dream and at release was shipped in beta. If they were already developing a “touch first” handset it wouldn’t have been that long. They shipped the device without an on screen keyboard! It came only later with updates
And the start menù of win mobile 6.5 with the nice hexagons was just a nice menu, the rest of the os still required stylus and tiny buttons on those terrible resistive touch screens