No, phones before the iPhone running J2ME had side-loading. Some carrier turned that off, but if you bought directly from the manufacturers you got a phone that you could control and do anything with by yourself, without any third party stopping you. Manufacturers felt confident that their J2ME sandboxing stopped apps from doing anything evil.

I feel like you didn't really answer my point, though. I criticize you for using an upbeat word to make a dictatorial system sound good. And you counter by talking about something entirely else, word definition and word history.