The author identified their own problem: "The fish eye iPhone lens creates distortion". If you don't want distortion from the ultrawide camera, don't use ultrawide. The traditional camera didn't have an ultrawide lens on it either (or if it does, it's less wide)

Most other points also seem contrived to me. Not all: skin color really seems better on the traditional camera. Whether that's due to the phone not being able to use the main camera, though, I wouldn't know...

These pictures simply need to be compared with reality if you want to know which camera is better. I can't tell what the shape of the leftmost person's head is. I noticed the difference, found the iPhone version more flattering, but then read the text and saw that the iPhone is apparently distorting it. A reader can't judge how close it is to reality. Continue reading, and matching reality is now bad: the traditional camera can't properly capture the background (or light in the foreground of the later child picture) and the author thinks that's good. Blurring and darkening is something you can always still add in, I'd say that a camera performed better if it delivered a picture close to reality and you can work with that data to highlight any aspect you want. The camera doesn't have to force that upon you