No it can't. You can not reliably tilt the plane of focus, something that precisely the tilt-shift lens does.
> No, it's not perfect just like an iPhone doesn't take as a good a picture as a high-end Canon/Nikon/Sony.
iPhone actually does very middle of the road pictures. You can never beat a Canon/Nikon/Sony simply because you do not have the sensor size. I am not even going to try to bring metering discussion here.
> And even on a large screen (my 65" TV) they still look great at a glance.
Depends on the viewing distance. Put ink on paper, and then we will talk.
> Let me change the perspective live while I'm taking the picture. IIRC I found apps that do this but they want $10-$20 a month. Here's hoping Apple and Google add it to the default camera apps. This could be even better because given computational photography the phone can take 10-20 shots at 1000fps and then merge them for higher res in the areas where there's less censor pixels per arc angle.
No, you are wrong. When you are shifting, you actually move over the "sensor" in the focus circle, not merely do a cropping gizmo like apps do.
If you want to really understand why view cameras still whip ass and tilt shift lenses are relevant, try taking photograph of a tall building and see how the edges are not parallel and if you try to correct that in software, you will see distortions.