Someone didn't try the power of Google pixels phones. Recently, many of my iPhone friends and family envy the pictures taken from Google Pixel 9 pro vs their latest iPhones. It's hands down the best camera and image processing.

Have you seen them on desktop or compared to a 20yo sensor without computerized photography? The post is not about iPhone cameras per se, but about small phone sensors + computerized photography. The author probably has that iPhone.

I would be willing to bet I have photos in my archive that cannot be reproduced on any modern smartphone, that I took in ~2004 with a Nikon D70.

It's still not going to come anywhere close to a real camera. Phone cameras with their tiny sensors have physical limitations that cannot be overcome, I guess until the day they are regenerating the entire image with AI based on what it expects the scene should look like with a real camera.