Here's a perfect camera comparison between the iPhone 7 Plus, Pixel XL, GS7 Edge and LG V20.
As you can see the iPhone 7 Plus and iOS 10 has an insane amount of noise reduction that literally destroys any fine details in good or bad lighting condition. I really wish Apple would tone the NR down quite a bit, I'd rather have some noise and more detail than no detail and less noise.
The dark shots were taken with the following settings
Pixel: ISO 1088; f/2; 1/17s
iPhone: ISO 1250; f/1.8; 1/15 s
GS7: 1SO 1000; f/1.7; 1/10 s
V20: ISO ?; f1/1.8; 1/9 s
The V20 has so much more light to work with. It's difficult to calculate the sensitivity, but I'm guessing that it's about ISO 500-800 . Now, compared to a large sensor camera, this is still deep into the grungy end, but it probably accounts for much of the clarity difference.
A good programmer can tweak both the noise reduction and metering, but hardware is hardware. A test using manual exposure and raw could have better revealed what cannot be fixed during the lifetime of the phone.