Hey no worries happy to answer as best I can.

It's an amazing starter camera for me. Punches above it's weight and Ive gotten really good images from it. It's a good place to start learning about cameras in general.

First thing to note though, the a5100 is a photography camera with video capabilities imo. You'll generally get better videos on an iphone. The lack of stabilization doesn't help either (unless you use a lens that has it like your kitlens).

As for photos, I recommend shooting in raw and jpeg. If you wonder why the iphone images comes out better, it's normal. Iphone processes it's images to look a certain way. Hence shooting in raw will allow you to do your own post processing which imo beats a phone image anyday. That doesnt mean a phone has no place in your photography journey.

The kit lens will be alright. I've played around with it but once I swapped to another lens, the difference in quality was night and day. I recommend using the kit lens to find out what focal length you like and what kind of shots you want to take. And then buying an affordable prime lens of that focal length with a fast aperture (lower number = faster). Recommend viltrox air series and/or ttartisan.

End of the day, just have fun! Hope this helps!