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My wife has iPhone XS and I just switched from long line of Nexus phones to iPhone XR. I don't own Pixel 3 or 3XL but the comparison between two iPhones makes me think that XR's camera deficiencies are actually software and not hardware related. So here are my quick findings.

Main difference between the two phones is that XR requires equally dispersed light source to create a great photo. XS will handle what ever light source is present and this doesn't mean only great night shots. Even during the day, any brighter shopfront neon sign or window will throw XR's values off balance and result in washed out photos. My XR night shots with a couple of bright lights were quite honestly embarrassing. XS handled the same scenes like a champ.

Today I took a picture of bright sky with clouds from within normally lit atrium, XS captured accurate blue color and clear and sharp edges of different light reflections within the window frame, XR showed blue-to-light green-to-white smudges.

One interesting thing I saw: sometimes for kicks I will open Google Photos and do an auto enhance on a photo - often this indeed makes them look nicer, at least to my untrained eye. I took two photos at the same time holding two phones next to each other. When I did auto enhance on a picture XR made it made shadows brighter and overall made picture pop more. But the same command also significantly changed overall hue of the XS' photo. I'm not an expert but this made me think that information that XS and XR are capturing is not quite the same.

Finally, XR's photos are much less sharp compared to ones XS makes.

All settings, including Smart HDR have been set the same between both phones.

Given that Pixel 3 has nearly identical camera but handles these much better (IMHO!) than XR I hope this is something Apple can address with a software update.