It could just be a case of "it's different so I don't like it."

I just didn't see this kind of processing in my photos before the iPhone.

For comparison, here's a photo I took with my Pixel XL in September. He's sitting still, which helps, but the light is just TV glow and this is even more zoomed than the last photo. There's still clearly processing and artifacts, but it looks completely different to me (and much better).