I have a Pixel 6 Pro. I played a bit with it's raw format when I got it. It's fairly impressive; especially for night time photography. When that came out, both Apple and Google sourced their sensors from Sony. I think that's still the case. At the hardware level, there's not that much difference between cameras in different phones. Most of the differences are created in software.
The dng files that come out of my Pixel phone down sample from 50 mega pixels to 12.5. You can't access the original 50 mega pixels. So each pixel has information from 4 "real" pixels. That's fairly effective for getting rid of noise. I took some night shots with it and it holds up pretty well. It actually makes Google's night vision AI mode a bit less impressive because the starting point isn't that bad.
My other camera is a Fuji X-T30. The lenses and sensor are clearly better on that one if you look at the raw files. More detail, dynamic range, etc. But at night it's kind of weak (noise). And if you are into that, Fuji's film emulation produces pretty pleasing jpg files without a lot of work. I shoot raw so I tend to ignore that. But it's a somewhat fair comparison because in both cases there isn't much post processing. Except the Fuji isn't doing a lot of AI trickery and is just relying on a good results that come out of the camera and applying a prefab tone mapping that resembles what film used to do.
The difference of course is that with the Fuji, you are making lots of creative choices with focal range, depth of field of the lens (aperture), shutter speeds, and ISO while you are shooting. You don't really have that with a smart phone (though you can have some control). The iphone and pixel phones fake some of this stuff and some people like the portrait mode with the fake bokeh. Lens quality is amazing given the size of phones these days. But it's not the same as shooting with a proper lens and they do have some real physical limitations.
And if you shoot raw, you gain a lot of control over tone mapping etc. Not for everyone of course. But also not the end of the world with the right software. I use Darktable for this and if you dial that in properly, it's not actually a lot of work.
That being said, my pixel takes decent photos without a lot of effort and there is value in that. I have it with me by default and that is invaluable. I only use the Fuji a few times per year. But there's less art to using a smart phone. Point and tap on the button and hope for the best.
