One could at least hope so!
The only source that could say for sure if there has been any altering in the software in the camera is Apple themselfes.
But by looking at some photos in this thread the software seem to be doing something diferent.
However, noisereduction will probably be needed for many years to come, but it dosn't hurt to dial it down a little. Everything you do to a .jpg is final. When working with raw picture data most programs create a profile for that picture and applys changes that way which can then be reverted. But when exporting a jpg you get what you get. Better to do the "extra" noisereduction yourself if needed.
Again, as I am not an iPhone user myself I cannot verify anything. But I can tell you this:
One thing that could help with this is to get the raw files from the phone. The downside to that is it take a lot of time to adjust every single picture.
And, yes, you will probably have to.
As an LG G4 owner, I used to have the raw-option enabled all the time, but there are a few downsides to this.
First, some kind of noise reduction will be needed.
Second, every photo needed to be de-vignetted. The large aperture compared with the small lens and widescreen format will cause really dark edges. A program called cornerfix is great for this, but it will add another step.
Third, the files will be huge compared to jpg. That might nog be a problem if you are shooting something important, but as your everyday pic's starts to pile up you got like a lot of gb's of yesterdays dinner and tomorrows movie-tickets
So in my personal conclusion, it is way better if the pictures comes out as balanced as they can get.