[cthalupa]

>I actually bought a last gen Sony RX100 VII and the difference in quality is negligible, other than the Sony having 20MP and the iphone only 12

Having recently purchased both the latest RX100 and the 11 pro, I both agree and disagree. For auto mode in certain conditions, when viewed at significantly scaled down resolutions, yes. To if you're posting to instagram or facebook or whatever, this is probably true.

Manual mode on the RX100 vs the 11 pro, even when using custom apps that expose a lot more of the camera settings, the RX100 starts to pull away. If you're doing any work with larger image sizes (and by larger I mean using a computer or TV screen instead of a phone), even more so. They're honestly not even close at that point.

Meanwhile, on the full frame side of things, the A7 line of cameras has been advancing picture quality at a rate as fast as anything in the iPhone, and just absolutely clobbers it. There's physics in play here, and I'm skeptical that software or processing power is going to increase the picture quality that much, and I have no idea how you would match things like super telephoto lenses in a smartphone form factor.