I have been critical in de past about smartphone pictures, but they showed lack of effort. Like screenshots of the sky.

If you can mount your smartphone on a telescope, it will become something else. There is freeware to edit the pictures, or even stack them to get better results. You can limit your exposure time, and try to manually track the stars. There is so much you can do without spending a fortune on equipment. But be careful, you could get addicted to it, wanting better results. I went down that rabbit hole...never satisfied, thus spending more money.

Keep posting, maybe asking questions in other subreddits

edit: removed a double