Technology

Well I'm 61, and once you had to go to the library for information. You had to carry either bulky maps (books), or inconvenient fold outs, If you wanted a map of where you were. If you wanted to use a phone, you'd have to go home and use the landline, or use a phone-booth.

The Smartphone allows you to see the position of GPS satellites above you. And have your position pinpointed in seconds, with detailed maps, that span the world if you want to. And the ability to call is from wherever you are whenever you wish is probably taken for granted by most now.

The camera of a modern budget phone is way better, than when we used film, that was expensive and took time to get developed on paper.
The ability to record good quality movies is total SciFi for a child of the 70's, where 16mm was hot, and most couldn't afford it! Now phones even have stabilization, and way better color reproduction, and better light and resolution, so much better any comparison is laughable. My phone can even take 960 FPS slow motion!

The motion sensors are based on Quantum Dynamics, in itself a crazy high tech solution, that reside in $1 components!

Internet everywhere, and a selection of apps that is the envy of any other system, music and movies available either from storage or the net. Integration of these technologies that were almost impossible before smartphones, like Stellaris, that knows your position, and allows you to just point at the sky, to see what stars are there.

And all these technologies have come together in smartphones mostly since 2007! Only 17 years compared to a lifetime of 61 in my case. 😀

There is nothing currently comparable to smartphones IMO. Not even LLM. And it's available for average consumers.