So true, in pre-covid era I traveled with only a cabin luggage for two and had no space for my DSLR + lenses. So while my DSLR had better image quality, actually I enjoyed more taking photos, filtering, editing and sharing them on the spot with my iPhone. I would never ever go back to shooting with my DSLR on holidays. I did it and it's just painful to carry around whole day. My iPhone does so much more than my DSLR for a fraction the space & weight of one of my lenses ...

> Unless you are printing these photos, the iphone's cameras are more than adequate for posting online.

Everyone says this until they see photos of the same event from a dedicated camera with a large optical path.

Using a proper dslr or mirrorless does make a measurable difference in terms of the depth of focus, aperture, image size, speed, etc. The lenses in the latest iphone can't really compete with a quality camera lens.

However as I mentioned those cameras are not fun to carry around all day unlike my phone. They are bulky and heavy, so I prefer not to use them except in important events or just around the house. And these days phone cameras are getting rather good for the average user's use case like posting to instagram.

If you think physical characteristics like aperture size are equivalent to using a tube amp, you are beyond help.