It does have it's advantages. I won't test it underwater, but it will definitely be fully tested in the NW rain.
I do think the cell phones heavily process the info and make it ideal for screen viewing. I was traveling with a friend that had a tablet, and I had a Nikon D200, back when they were a new DSLR. It was a bit comical, if not frustrating as all get out.
She was point and shooting the same mushroom bent down, through her legs standing up, as I was down in the dirt with the close-up lens on the D200. Frustrated the daylights out of me, her images looked better than mine when we compared. But when we went to put them on the same medium, the screen on the computer, they became a bit more equal, if not a bit better from the DSLR.
I'm pretty sure if/when you print those, the DSLR will be clearer, sharper, etc... as it will then be a true test. No electronic bells and whistles to bump the image on a screen. Curious to see what the difference is. If there is NO difference, the DSLR market may take a tumble ) :
Your experience says something about big cameras: sometimes it is hard to get the shot purely due to camera size, I've had this frustration more than once :)
In my tests, I shot in RAW as to avoid in-phone processing, and I found that the DSLR trumps the phone in terms of noise and dynamic range, and had more latitude for post-processing without hurting image quality.