In my experience, iPhone 4 was better than iPhone 8 which is better than iPhone 17. Either I got lucky, went to more interesting places and composed better, or the technology is getting worse from an aesthetic point-of-view. I definitely had more keepers, more memorable photos of a higher subjective quality. I pretty much don't bother with iPhotography now.

Similar story on Android but I won't bore with the model names and numbers. Older handsets gave better results. Pre-smartphone, king of the hill was the Sony K800, I loved the photos from that phone. No fancy software, just quality hardware and straightforward processing gave consistent results.

That said, I should try Halide app. Bringing it back to basics with less computation might be the way forward for me.