The X100 series is a cool camera. I had one since the first version of X100. But I found it more convenient to pull my phone out instead of carrying that camera. I do have a X-T2 if I want to take more "serious" photos.

I have an x-t30 and my phone can't even compare. It's an entry level Samsung and those have really bad and slow cameras, esp in low light. A flagship might be a different story. Tbh, I wasn't that impressed with the fuji camera with the included 15-45 kit lens, which is rather mediocre. But after getting the 35mm f2 I can really appreciate the difference in the quality of photos. The other part is doing a course on photography and learning the manual settings. Without that, there is really no reason to use anything but a smartphone.

I shoot manual with my X-T2 most of the time, especially during portrait shooting. But shooting manual on a DSLR is not the panacea. You only need manual mode in certain situations. Heck, I read pros like David Alan Harvey uses full auto setting on his camera sometimes (probably a lot of other pros too). On my iPhone 12, I have exposure compensation on the main camera app. And that is good enough as well.

Sure, I don't use full manual either, but after being forced to practice I can say that it made me more aware of what the camera is doing. I can track the settings and if the camera chose a slow shutter speed, I can understand that stuff can become blurry. Then I can adjust manually to compensate. Or when the sun is harsh, I will dial down the exposure comp. In general, I adjust either the aperture or speed, but let the ISO work automatically. I can now notice mistakes earlier, when the auto wb or the meter are wrong. I also have a better sense of where each setting should be to get a good result.

> The other part is doing a course on photography and learning the manual settings.

I will concede that I'm not the average consumer and already had "manual mode" camera experience

> Without that, there is really no reason to use anything but a smartphone.

I would disagree with that sentiment, but I'm on the other side of the fence of knowledge, so it's hard for me to say

This was an introduction course for digital photography with practical training, so we would get out once a week to shoot with our cameras. A lot of my colleagues had either older second-hand or borrowed cameras. Of course, we would hang around before and after the lessons to chitchat. And I could notice a sentiment from some that they couldn't see the benefits of these cameras, since they could get better results with their phones thanks to built-in processing algorithms (at least what you could see on the little screens). Their cameras were complicated and the automatic settings wouldn't return great results without post-processing. And none of them were really excited by the idea of sitting in front of the computer, editing raw files. But this seems like a must for getting the most out of the camera's sensor, since most cameras aren't doing much or any processing by themselves.