First of all it's a cell phone with fully automatic exposure and white balance. Everyone is ignoring that fact that the lighting (fluorescent) and color is changing 120 times a second (twice per full cycle). This makes a shot with an automatic (unknown shutter speed) camera very unpredictable. The lighting can be changing during the shot. That's one reason that using the flash gives a much better image. This lighting is more reliable.
Finally there seems to be so much confusion between white balance and exposure. They are not related. White balance is a software adjustment that attempts to remove color from an image where no color is viewed in person. In other words white should look white, gray should be gray etc. No color.
Proper exposure is based on 18% reflectance (13% on some digital cameras). The camera doesn't know the color of the object. It only knows the light reflected back to the camera. That's why white paper, gray, black, or any even color will always give a gray image. This surprises many people. Mainly because we rarely take a picture of a solid color. More sophisticated cameras have exposure compensation and various adjustments to let the photographer account for this.
I'd love to see exposure compensation, and white balance adjustment added as an option in the iPhone. Of course some adjustment can be done in post processing. There are many third party apps that help, but it's always best to get exposure right.
