Yea, textures are the biggest thing (unless there’s video). But don’t underestimate vertices, even when using strips. Unity, i think, just ships textures as BCn, meaning 1MB per 1k texture (would be 3-4MB raw). It’s even better for the gpu then raw. Then there’s normal maps, etc.
Another thing is lighting data, be it some textures, probes, or whatever. That can also take up plenty of space.
Less triangles and smaller textures. Crt monitors had less resolution and practically built-in anti-aliasing so they could get away with (and had to) “worse” assets.
Also since ssd-s have become mainstream unity uses less compression so it would load relatively faster.
Basically because monitors got better, standards got higher, competition got fiercer, storage got bigger and faster, etc.
And it’s not like there weren’t shitty games before, just everybody forgot about them.
I like how the game Banished is made. From a requirenments/looks ratio it is IMO great. One guy made it. Ghosts of Tsushima also looks amazing and is great from a techical perspective, but it is heavy.
Lineageos. I’m like 1 android version behind latest on s9.
Also it depends on the chip maker and the phone maker. Fairphone will get the latest for like a decade…