I've been using my phone as a camera for the last 3 years, apart from two bespoke photography trips where my SLR ventured underground. I am constantly amazed by the brightness and depth the phone can achieve with only a couple headlights. Sure there's a knock on quality, but they typically are perfectly usable for online and small prints.
I think a lot of it is not in the image capture (although I know great technological strides have been made in that) but in the image processing, something that SLR's in my experience purposely avoid to keep the process more "professional". This does mean that some images can come out seemingly quite manipulated, but sometimes i like that. This photo I took on Saturday looking up Alum has similarities to one of Gonzo's paintings:
And then turning around, a quick photo of the passage behind only took seconds to coordinate:
There is also the zoom versatility of modern phone cameras, primarily those with additional lenses for zoom and wide. Another example from Alum, with the first snap using my camera's wide lens and the second with the 5x optical zoom lens. Taken moments apart, from the same spot.
For those interested, I use a Huawei P30 Pro. You can pick them up second hand on eBay for less than £200. My first survived 2 years of Cussey, literally just in my oversuit pocket, so they are definitely pretty robust bits of kit too.
And all these photos simply on Auto photo setting, therefore agreeing with the OP "Blimey, that was too easy..."