But, all of us should remember that stunning images have been made with smartphones, despite all the limitations mentioned here. A skillful photographer, mindful of the limits of the equipment, can still produce a creditable photo.

I love my “phone photos,” but I’m completely confident that I’ll be able to capture and convey exactly what I see by using a REAL camera. And I genuinely believe that technology (note that I’m a lifelong IT professional) will never be able to match the intricacies of real physics.

Who said analog?

This connection of art if photography with the possession of a camera is only your thoughts! Only few will do this and even fewer will continue to analog photography in order to immerse more like you say.

Eventually all smartphone photographers will either elect to emerse themselves further into the art of photography – as an art, not a technology – or they will move on to something else. That further emersion dictates that they will get hold of a dedicated camera. Until they’ve been there, they won’t understand the difference.

Evidently, neither do you, otherwise you would not proselytise on the part of smartphone photographers in the imagining that, just because they are skilled image makers, they have yet fully explored the art of photo taking.

Entirely agree.

They are each specialised instruments.
There is some overlap in function.

But each will always excel in its speciality.
Should one come up with a feature that beats the other’s speciality then the other will simply be incorporate it and we’ll be back to the basic difference again.

Two different specialist instrument.

So that’s the guts of the matter.

That’s as objective as we can get.
A lot of the debate is about subjective things. That muddies the water.

We don’t need to fret and worry.
Subjectively: do what pleases you most, use what you find good.

Objectively: the manufacturers know their specialist instruments better than you are I: they will continually make them as good as is humanly possible in their field.

For myself I find the instrument that needs the most improvement to be me.

absolutely. there’s a simple fact should never be overlooked: whatever tricks and qualities smartphones ever get, whatever, no matter how good, it can, of course, be incorporated into a dedicated camera.
If their ‘tricks and qualities’ ever get good enough we won’t need to figure it out in our discussion columns: the camera manufacturers will do it for us and they’ll produce dedicated cameras that include whatever improvements they’ve dreamed up.
And still add more benefits that the manufacturer knows he can only give you by putting them in a camera.
So: no matter how good smartphones get they’ll never be better at photography than a dedicated camera.
And no matter how sophisticated cameras get they’ll never be better at comms and web browsing, app running, etc., than smartphones.

So what’s all the discussion about?
Well its about the user.
And what the user wants.
There’s a missing component in the question ‘which is best for photography: smartphone or camera?’ and that component is: ‘For my requirements’.

Objectively they’re each specialist instruments. With overlapping abilities sometimes.
Subjectively you’re sometimes satisfied with one and sometime with the other.

It’s two years ago your comment, so you are excused. I hope you have sold in time your lenses and cameras before lose too much.