It has its purpose and the cameras are capable enough for something you have always on you, but I also heard that podcast and let me say: that comparison doesn’t make any sense. All the pictures were taken in perfect light conditions and with broad depth of field, nullifying any advantage a large sensor and a fast lens could have. It’s like making a race between a race car and a city car on a straight 30km/h road: you cannot notice any difference. As soon as you need to freeze motion, take fotos indoor or in low light, or want the smooth out of focus blur, iPhones fotos look a lot different than ones from any dedicated camera device (I speak from very direct and recent experience).

But for everyday and occasionally quality snaps, this phone is superb (+ unbelievable video)

Switching to your sidearm is always faster than reloading, private.

If I have my big honking Bird Lens on my real camera and I want to take a quick wide angle picture or a landscape shot or whatever, I usually just get out my phone. With its little pinhole lens and dinkum slow sensor, that type of shot is really the one thing phone cameras excel at.

Everyone's definition of a "viable" camera varies drastically depending on what they're intending to do with it. There is no question that a good DSLR or mirrorless with a good lens on it and in the hands of someone who knows how to use it will be objectively superior to any rinky-dink cell phone camera, no matter what the marketing department says. But for a pretty good chunk of most people's daily lives a cell phone camera is indeed good enough. The amount of technological improvement that's been packed into the tiny little things over the years is honestly amazing even if nothing else.

I took this picture with the lousy camera on my $179 budget phone. This one, too, which I'm rather fond of for some reason (although not necessarily the subject itself in reality). And even this long depth of field closeup. And many others like it.