That's a similar pitfall in the argument that the 5090 missing ROPs is still much faster than the competition so "it's fast enough".
Swapping features (and very common and tested ones at that) for "a better experience" lacks innovation. And probably cost the same, instead of going to R&D the funds were given to the Marketing department.
Imagine getting a car that comes without a radio and being said: "it's for a better driving experience" it works for some niches (Ferrari F40) but the iPhones, although not cheap, still find their way onto a bigger, mainstream audience.
So, kinda like DLSS...
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I wouldn't say that it's comparable to the iPhone (the first was universally agreed to be bad, but the form factor decided the future. Even if the likes of Ballmer/Blackberry didn't think so) many of the advantage that are/were associated with android are often QoL rather than absolute mandatory features. There's a parity when it comes to the most used apps. Entry level android phones were the biggest beneficiary of uppgradable storgae because they were shipped with and unuasble amount of base storage. (512 mb in 2010 vs 8GB for a flagship. Those were becoming bordeline unusable after 3 months). For many regular users, the iPhone does exactly what it needs to do to serve it's function. And you get a bonus if you happen to be a mac user/use other Apple product. They are also pretty fashionable, tons of third party accesories for them, wich can't always be said of the competition. Phones quickly went beyond the utilitarian aspect to become an everyday accesory.
iOS is/was odd on some aspect compared to android, but not in way that makes the product unuseable. Unlike entry level android phone of the 2010's, those thing were absolute crap. Windows phones were sooo much better in that sector, but suffered from the lack of apps. Yes the bend gate and the antennagate happened, but samsung batterygate was probably the biggest fuck-up that industry ever saw with people getting injured. But they recovered from that.
It's not about if you ever fuck up, but rather how often/how dangerous it is/do you make the necesesarry step to fix that fuck up.
Now, for photography/video every phone is software enhanced, they don't have a choice: the sensor is small, and most people don't want to fiddle with settings/touch up the pictures themselves to have something that looks great. The pixel is so good because of the software. Sony makes phones that are superior in that aspect (bigger sensor) but the automatic mode is so basic you don't really see the benefits when you do a side by side comparision.
Nowadays the iphone cameras feels a bit basic it's your regular image processing stuff focusing on exposure, noise reduction, dynamic range. Android makers have been going bananas about AI enhanced photography
How Samsung Galaxy Cameras Combine Super Resolution Technologies With AI Technology to Produce High-Quality Images of the Moon – Samsung Mobile Press
Improve Photos with Pixel’s AI Camera Technology - Google Store
It's the first GPU generation in a while were every SKU seems to have some kind of issue, when before you were safe if you didn't buy the high-end from nvidia.
