Did the iOS/Android situation actually swap, or was the X an outlier? I have photos from a recent event taken entirely with phones, and the result mirrors my experience for the past many years.
iPhone (11-15 including Pro Max) photos look "normal". Very, very similar to what my eyes saw in terms of colors. Photos taken with Android phones (Pixel 9 Pro XL, recent Oppo or Samsung A series, etc.) look terribly unnatural. The blue of the sky, the green of the plants, the red of the dress, they look "enhanced" and unnatural, nothing like what my eyes saw. I can tell apart almost any iPhone vs. Android picture just by looking at the colors on the same display.
The resolution or sharpness are harder to judge with one look and I wasn't trying to compare quality. But the colors are too obvious to miss.
The phone processing is lagely shaped by social media culture. Camera makers also started to incorporate in-camera editing features on vlogger targeted models.
DSLRs had in camera lighting correction during shooting and post-processing since 2016 or so [0].
[0]: https://www.nikonimgsupport.com/eu/BV_article?articleNo=0000...
https://www.panasonic.com/uk/consumer/cameras-camcorders/lum...
Star filter is especially funny since it's used in k-drama opening/closing sequences.
Modern cameras like Nikon Z6/III can also do similar processing on camera during shoots to reduce post-processing load after the shoots to accelerate the production pipeline.
But at the end of the day its all about the photographer than the equipment. Just ask chefs. 20 students same kitchen, ingredients, recipe, 20 different tasting dish.
What really drove that in was when my art teacher took a shot of me with my camera and holy shit it was one of the best pics I've seen. He just has the eye at the end of the day.
It the old days Apple used to somewhat pride themselves with taking more "realistic" photos. While Android had it the other way around and basically post processes a lot of things as well as colouring. Mostly used for Social Media like Instagram.
And then came iPhone X. They started changing the colour of Sky and sharpening a lot of things. To the point of a lot of Photos taken by my camera looks great but also looked fake.