This is an overstatement. My first smartphone was an old Sony in 2014 and it was good.
My second phone was a crappy Samsung in 2017 and it was bad. Slow data rates. Horribly over saturated photos.
My third smartphone was a pixel 2 and it was remarkable. Better battery life than I was used to. The photos looked amazing.
Then the released the night mode feature and I realized I had never seen a good phone Pic taken in a bar, but I was, on last year's hardware taking decent photos in dive bars...
Then pixel eventually started supporting portrait mode. That was cool.
But really? Apps and websites have gotten so bloated with shit we don't realize how capable phone processors have become. If the data on websites now had been this way in 2013? Forget about it. People would have hated smartphone.
Progress on cameras has been pretty obvious. Batteries and screen size slightly less obvious. But I feel the counter acted gains on processor speeds have gone unnoticed. Phones have changed in the past ten years.