Despite their marketing, I’ve never been aware of iPhones actually having the best image quality of smartphones.
I haven’t followed the iPhone 14. Does it do something different?
Your specific situation makes sense, but generalizing that is a bit of a stretch.
My phone is better than my older cameras too, but not than my FF Canon. I’ve made this comment before as well:
Phones have completely destroyed the P&S market for good reason. They can’t touch the FF and above market due to simple physics.
Is an 8 year old CPU using 200mm^2 as good as a modern CPU using 200mm^2? No. Is it as good as a modern CPU using 50mm^2? Probably not either.
Edit to respond to child: No, the comment I responded to HERE on HN is an 8 year old sensor (Sony A6000).
Also, sensors on consumer cameras haven't actually changed much in the past 8 years (marketing hype to the contrary). Low light performance is a bit better, but that's unlikely to have been a major factor in the OP's comparison given the use of an f1.8 lens.
This page is useful for comparing old and new: https://www.dpreview.com/reviews/image-comparison You can see some improvements from newer cameras with the same resolution, but it's not a huge difference.
The next morning I imported them and flipped through commingled a6000 and iPhone shots. The difference was stark. The iPhone (14 pro) had _significantly_ better quality across the board. The only exception was an amusing amount of bokeh on some fireworks (as mentioned by the author). I think portrait mode may have been able to do a passable version of this had I thought to try it. I was not using ProRes.
Aside from the disparity in quality, picking up my old camera again THIS year was pretty underwhelming. Focus was slow and hunted a bit. It prevented rapid shots to catch fireworks in the background. The screen and viewfinder was grainy/low-res. The import was clunky.
It's listed on FB marketplace if anyone is interested.
So yeah, I very much concur.