As sibling says... they have high resolution, but terrible optics. Fixed aperture, bad in low light, and all the photos get a similar.. flat... quality to them that they then alter heavily in software with various computational photography / "AI" techniques that ... well, they're fine, and good for the market they're after, but it's limiting.

Even a 15 year old interchangeable lens camera with a lower MP sensor can produce better pictures than a phone, esp if you want to do things like background blur / bokeh which is not possible at all with a phone (though they emulate it in software).

Hell lately I've dug up an old Canon Powershot 12MP CCD digicam out of a box, and put a hacked firmware on it (that can shoot RAW and let you do proper manual control of the lens), and gotten really interesting results. That thing has a tiny sensor, but having actual aperture control makes a big diff.

I can pull out my decade old Sony and it absolutely beats a new iPhone on image quality. Zero contest. Phone images only look ok because they are mostly viewed on a small screen.

They only have absurdly high resolution. The optical quality is rather mediocre if you need to zoom or shoot in low light.