I know people have said that the XS/Max camera is better than the X, but just looking at these photos are mind blowing especially coming from a smartphone. They look fantastic and it goes to show that we've come to a point of diminishing returns on newer phones with "better" cameras.
It is better.... the sensor is 30% larger which makes a big difference. Also on the X, when a photo from it is fully zoomed in on, especially in low light, people look like wax figurines or water color paintings because of the heavy noise reduction. The only way to avoid that is to shoot Raw.
The Xs camera doesn’t do this until iso 2000 is reached. That’s pretty darn good! ISO 800 on my Xs is very clean. Can’t say that about the x. The larger the sensor, the better the photo. The quality of that sensor matters as well and the size of its pixels. As a photographer, I can definitely see a huge difference.