“a great deal of fancy equipment — from drones, gimbals, dollies, industrial set lighting, and other recording accessories — is still required to make iPhone footage look this good.”
But that’s just a standard requirement to make stuff look that good.
Slap a cheap lens on an Alexa and light like an amateur and you will get a subpar video-result with the only redeeming factor being the sensor.
And sure, the sensor (or medium) does matter, but production design and good lighting can be used to make almost any camera look great. I don’t think thhere’s anything wrong with that.
Steven Soderberg shot a movie some years ago on an earlier iphone. Some of the shots were truly terrific because of attention to the above.
You can copy or emulate a lot of high-end/cinematic/filmic looks quite affordably.
For light you need output + size of light source, easily attainable on a budget.
Good audio solutions also exist for reasonable $$.
What you pay the most for when using expensive equpiment is more features related to interconmectedness and lifting some of the work in post-production, and durability. But it does not nescessarily translate to better images than what can be achieved by even bedroom-indie filmmakers