Somewhere (I am losing track of all the sites, lol) I saw an indication of the specs of the sensor itself, and it showed the iPhone 8's spec (something very specific) to be different than the XR's, and that the SE matched the 8 and not the XR. If that's the case, it must still be that the image processing made possible by the A13 more than makes up for it.
I'm coming from a first edition SE, so the 6S camera, and I'm hoping for better photos than that. I was really hoping for Night Mode, hoping that the chip was all that was necessary, but it is not, it needs a sensor that only exists right now on the 11 series. I would call that my only real disappointment in this new SE. Oh, well.