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AS MENTIONED BEFORE, THE iPHONE CAMERA MODULE IS not perfect. While it does, in fact, produce files that require only minor adjustments-primarily bright sunny day pictures. Where it “fails” to get it almost right are those picture making situations that have; a. low contrast, and, b. night / very low light scenes. In those situations the computational bits seem to be programed to deliver a full-range (nearly pure black > nearly pure white) file. That is, a file that does not match what the eye sees in situ.
In some cases, a simple adjustment with a BRIGHTNESS slider gets you very close to where you want to go. In other cases, a more nuanced use of the CURVES tool is called for. In either case, the fact that you are working with a fairly rich file-no, not RAW rich but way more than adequate-gives one lots of room with which to work. Neither fix requires an advance degree in Rocket Science or software engineering.
FYI, I am going to try a few experiments with making pictures with the Scene Detection and Smart HDR disabled to determine the difference, if any (I assume there will be), that those setting create.
PS all of my file processing is performed with the intent of accurately reproducing, as much the medium and my memory allow, what my eyes perceived, in situ, at the moment of making a picture.