486 were generally better up until Pentium 2 came out.
No way. Late stage Pentiums were markedly better than 486.
My parents bought a Pentium 1 133 mhz with Windows 95 in late 1996 and it worked great (for the time)
At my parents work they had an 486 with Windows 95 and it was noticeably less responsive. It was not a fun experience. I don't remember the exact model number of the 486 (I wasn't even 10 years old back then), but I do remember Pentiums being generally much more performant than computers with 486. From memory, 486 computers generally ran Windows 3.11 and were not upgraded to Windows 95 (keep in mind that everything was pirated, licensed Windows copies among business users was more of mid-2000s thing where I lived).
Smartphone hardware is generally noticeably weaker than laptop (let alone desktop) hardware.
There is not much you can do about this.