Here's a shot I took with my Pixel 6 Pro and the other from my 13 Pro, which do you guys prefer?
I can tell you guys right now the Pixel 6 Pro nailed the color temperature here, it was a warm colored afternoon as the sun was going down. I do prefer the way my boy Gotti looks, it emphasizes the black fur better but the overall photo didn't represent how the scene looked color wise.
If only we could get Pixel's processing/camera on am iPhone.... One can dream right? Lol
A lot of calculations need to be made when converting the signal that hits the sensor into a representation of a scene (or... a photo as we know it). White balance and exposure are really tricky when you think about it, especially since not only is a camera trying to actually figure out what is out there but also do it in a way that tries to replicate what we see by our own eyes + make it 'asthetically pleasing'.
For the last bit, the way our eyes see light, focus and give us an image in our brains has as much to do with physics as it does with neuroscience. We can 'see' a huge amount of F-stops when it comes to dynamic range, but also what is happening is that our brain is filling in the gaps and making huge assumptions (kind of like a natural signal processing system). Our fovea blind spot is the most obvious example of this.
As how this relates to your photos.
Firstly, yes the Pixel image is much warmer and aesthetically pleasing to me. How much it truly represented the real world conditions is something only you would know (and the mind does like to play tricks). You mentioned that Gotti's fur is black, and better represented in the iPhone photo, yet the rest of the scenes colours didn't match? Feels slightly contradictory. That being said, iPhone have always traditionally shot a bit 'cool' in their colour tone.
I don't like how the front of the nose/mouth is out of focus on the Pixel. Seems to detract from the subject. If we look at the tiny hairs on the upper back of your dog against the background, on the Pixel they seem soft and out of focus, while on the iPhone there is more clear definition. However, the iPhone has done a less good job keeping the hairs on the ears in focus. You have cropped in a little tighter on the iphone photo through (I'm not sure on the focal length/aperature size of the Pixel) so comparisons are tricky.
With regards to exposure, clearly the Pixel is trying to keep the shadows of the fur visible. While the iPhone is choosing to crush those blacks a lot more. In real life, it would feel like maybe the fur is as visible as the Pixel, but that's probably because our eyes are very quickly adjusting 'exposure' as we dart our eyes over a scene. It would be interesting to see what is recoverable from the orignal file or if you shot in ProRes, but I sometimes quite like the darker shadows for portrait type photos.
All in all, both cameras have decided to take different decisions in producing a final photo. As ever, the big question is to what the end goals really in an age where the majority of people expect a photo to look a certain way and not necessary like real life.
Btw, have you looked into the Photo Styles that Apple introduced with the 13? Maybe you can set things to be warmer by default and more to your liking. Remember, this bakes in the temperature adjustment quite early on in the image capture pipeline, and I 'think' its not something you can retrospectively adjust, so be warned.
I find all of this stuff super interesting, and always try to learn more about how photography works on the iPhone. As others have said, 'point and shoot' via the Camera app has its pro's and con's. You are handing yourself over to Apple and their processsing algorithms which are designed to be the best average solution for everyone. But for specific shooting conditions and if you know what you are doing plus really care about the quality of the shot, always switch to a dedicated camera app like Halide.
That's not the experience most are wanting I'd wager...
