I was wondering when someone would bring this up.

THe problem with most ios games is that publishers release it to work on all ios devices.  So, the game you speak of requires an iphone 5 (2 years old)or above.  The iphone 6's CPU is 25% faster and the GPU is 50% faster than last years iphone 5s.  So, if the game required buyers to have an iphone 6, it would be much better already.  

WIth hundreds of millions of cell phones selling each year, the tech is evolving at a very brisk rate.  Phone manufacturers are just getting into better GPU's now.  Like I said in the OP, 2-4 years from now, the power of the cell phones will be quite astonishing.  Of course, it takes a few years before their is enough of an install base with that power before developers are willing to release games for them.  

I would still think that most games will be developed for consoles/PC first and ported to phones a couple of years later either way.  But, most casuals might not have a problem with that.  But, based on the # of developers going after mobile now, it might go just the opposite.  That would probably cause the console games to be dumbed down, but if this gen lasts 7-10 years, it won't change much.

To be honest, I was surprised at how powerful some of the new phones are. Like the Samsung Galaxy S5 has like a 2.3 Ghz processor or something like that

Apple usually bragged that the new iphone was twice as fast as the old model every year, now it's only 25 percent? Not looking good. Mobile gaming is a decade behind and just catched up to the PSP.

What's your point?  It looks incredibly worse.  I can get Skyrim playable on a $150 tablet with the right settings and mods, but that doesn't mean the hardware in it is as strong as a $1000 PC running it with Next Gen mods in 4K.

Most PC's that people use aren't much more powerful than the 360/PS3.  So, the minority of pc owners are the pc elite.  With last gen systems closing in on 275 million sold, why do we think that people aren't satisfied with them.  There are only 22-25 million Next gen systems in total.  People are more than satisfied with last gen.  The 9% that have gone next gen are the few that care.  For most(the casuals) gamers, last gen graphics will suffice for now and 2-4 years from now when the power has increased 2-3 fold again on these smartphones, the casuals will be satisfied with what they get again.  2-4 years after that, as the masses adopt 4k in droves, the smartphones will already be more than capable.

Point is, with diminishing returns on the graphical improvements of displays, the ability of portable devices to get to higher graphical capabilities will go faster than the advancements in display technology.  Now that the mobile market is exploding, game developers will take better advantage of these systems and produce better games.  The real holdback to most of the mobile games is the interface.  Without a good controller, games will always have a limit on mobile.  If in the near future a controller can simply connect via bluetooth to any phone and a universal system is in place for controller design within a mobile OS, the gaming arena will explode.

Economics alone will ensure that cell phone games never catch up to consoles. Apple and Google have conditioned their customers to not want to pay for anything, so what they get are cheap F2P clones of casual PC games.

Thing is in Japan consoles are already dying. That's why there was an article of how they are looking for"Final Fantasy XV" to be the savior of all consoles in Japan. The link is here...

http://gamerant.com/final-fantasy-15-end-console-gaming-japan/

What's stopping the U.S. from following this trend?

The iPhone 6 will be at best, 1/10 of what a ps4 can do... Even if they double the performance every year (witch we clearly know it won't happen) 2018 its the year they release a more powerfull iPhone than home consoles... Not today, not soon, not until we're well into the 9th generation...

In terms of gamers, that is utterly false.  Intel's current integrated graphics (Which still use much more power than cell phones) are stronger than the PS3, and AMD's are even stronger than that.  Also, check Steam's survey, most people have a 550 Ti or better, which is not as strong as an Xbox One, but is FAR stronger than a 360.

Last, phones are now hitting the same performance wall Desktops hit 3 years ago, and Laptops hit 2 years ago.  They were newer, so they had a lot of catching up to do.  Anything that can be made to run on low power with a phone, can generally be scaled up to a powerful desktop.  Game developers will NEVER run out of things to do with that extra power.

The IPhone is still weaker than the Dreamcast