No, camera phones were very good since the Sony Ericsson days - ~2006.
I have a book from that era all about mobile camera photography, written by a professional photographer, and illustrated only with pictures shot on a Nokia phone. The pictures are of excellent printable quality with amazing colors.
It was extremely popular brand in Europe for many years. At one time almost everybody had a good Nokia or Sony Ericsson. I saw Motorola Razr like one time in the wild.
Well, I speak from an American perspective and the Razr was everywhere, but according to Wikipedia their peak was around 10% market share. Nokia was much much more popular.
IIRC a combination of weird regional roaming agreements, odd incompatible networks and the sheer size of the country leading to lots of coverages blackspots meant that the US just didn't get widespread adoption of decent mobile tech.
Yeah, that makes the iPhone hype much more sensible. I remember it as very much underwhelming, I had a phone like that 2 years before it came out, and it had apps.
My Sony K750i from 5 years earlier was phenomenal. Only 2mp resolution but the lens was brilliant and I've still got a bunch of photos I printed from it that still stand up to scrutiny.
I think at that period the US was way behind the rest of the world on mobile tech. I remember people in a phone shop in New York being really impressed with it.
