Top End smartphones might be able to replace a 8-10 year old P&S camera they still have respectively horrible cameras. But it doesn't really matter, no one prints photos any more, and with the amount of filters people stick on each photo it doesn't matter if you are making it with a 240p web cam or a 50MP DSLR it will all look the same.
The best camera is the one you have with you. Sure, my Canon DSLR takes nearly infinitely better pictures than my iPhone, but it's the iPhone that takes most of the pictures because it's the one in my pocket.
You are right, of course, that printing from a phone camera is futile, but printing from a P&S is much the same unless you've purchased something at the top of the line.
I think you would be surprised at how much closer a $200 Canon P&S is to your DSLR than your iPhone both in terms of image quality and precision of operation. If you know how to use one. Example: this was taken with a Canon Powershot A610 that cost me $250 around seven years ago: http://folk.ntnu.no/asmunder/files/images/nudibranch.jpg
Very nice pic from your Canon A610. Fully agree about P&S cameras today. I wouldn't run down the quality of today's top of the line phones, they're very good.
Me and my wife still do print a select number of photos. Whenever we travel we purposely take a couple of shots from her Lumix (a non DSLR but with replaceable lens) for the purpose of printing and putting it up on our "travel" wall. Not sure how it would look like if we used our phones to take those shots.
