Yeah, hard to justify buying a low end camera when your phone has a better one built in
Your phone camera is way better at the job to be done, which is to quickly share pics of your cock, cats, or kids, depending on what age bracket you are in. Traditional cameras, in which I include mirrorless, are still terrrrible when it comes to quickly bouncing a photo to Instagram, and arguably even worse when it comes to quickly making a video for TikTok.
In particular the software assistance for capturing dynamic range and shooting in odd lighting conditions on an iPhone is pretty spectacular. Replicating the point and shoot experience requires a pretty substantial amount of skill on a traditional DSLR.
I think this depends on the shot. The Pixel 4 easily beats “cheap DSLR” in several settings, particularly low light. I know folks who have an iPhone as a phone and a Pixel as a camera :).
It’s true that it’s also much better at “photo production” (capture => minor edit => post), but I think you can find examples where the photo itself is strictly better.
A kit zoom lens will struggle in low light, but you can get extremely high quality fast primes for a couple of hundred dollars these days that will blow away any smartphone.
Apple's low light performance in their new phones is excellent, and they are making huge strides in every area with every generation. A minimum acceptable DLSR with an acceptable fast prime will cost $1k, which is also the cost of Apple's excellent pro iphone that will rival the quality of the former for the average user.
The Olympus 25mm f/1.8 is absolutely fantastic, and smaller. As are all the Olympus fast primes. You can get it for $250.
More expensive fast primes are worth the price for me. But the entry-level ones are optically pretty great these days.
[1] https://old.reddit.com/r/GooglePixel/comments/9rb53o/weekly_...