I'm not super convinced about that. The (raw) quality in the phones sensors hasn't climbed as quickly as on dedicated cameras this last years. The secret sauce for today's phone's cameras is a lot of processin, and if you get an unprocessed photo from a current day phone-size sensor is almost as bad as one from yeeears ago.
And that's OK for regular photos, but I guess is not that good if you want to do image or signal processing and your data has already gone through some other processing and a "IA".
Raw sensor size in cell phones has massively increased compared to years ago, and improvements in sensor technology (BSI, for instance) has improved performance of sensors of similar size. These did not exist before.
Obviously processing is getting more powerful, but I think you're discounting the improvements in the space. There's a few notable exceptions (e.g., Pixel phones used the same kinda crappy sensor for many generations), but largely people keep using the newer, better sensor on flagship devices.
And that's OK for regular photos, but I guess is not that good if you want to do image or signal processing and your data has already gone through some other processing and a "IA".