I doubt know what Pixel does for compression but they certainly ruin their photos the second they’re saved. It looks great in the viewer, then even raws look smeary.

I have a moto and the photos indeed do suck compared to my DSLR. But I'm a hobbyist, not a professional photographer. If I were taking pictures at an important event or something, yeah, I'd probably pack my DSLR for that. When it comes to day to day pictures, just capturing memories, it's not worth it for me anymore.

I would love to get a mirrorless eventually though, seems like the best of both worlds.

Zoom is better than what it used to be and not outright a lie. I still have a dual camera phone (pixel 7, standard camera and superwide), and the picture is reasonable at 2.5x. It's a 50mp sensor that, by default, only takes ~16mp pictures by only using certain sensor cells. Zooming uses a tighter group of those cells while still making a 16mp picture. But yes, zoomed pictures absolutely lose quality as the cropping starts hitting the limits of a tiny piece of do-all glass. My phone goes to 8x. Meanwhile, the flagship phones with an additional mild-zoom cameras bump up the baseline further. Still, only equivalent to like 40-50mm on a DSLR full frame sensor. Not enough for me, not for the price, so I still lug my DSLR around occasionally, as my eye tends to prefer framing with my phone above 3x - or about 50-85mm on a crop sensor.