Gosh! Have we really gone this far? So far that we all believed that the "it just works" mentality has entitled us to just complain about any thing, and blame this on a design defect?
The simple fact that people are complaining about lens flares and chromatic aberrations just shows how much they absolutely do not know how lens, light, refractions and other high-school physics work. They probably were sleeping in class, or just simply erased those teachings from their memory because they classified this as "Why am I learning this, it will not be useful to me in real life".
What's next? Are they going to complain that we cannot use the phone under water, and that we cannot make phone calls because the battery is dead?
Lens flares, chromatic aberrations, etc., are as old as lenses and cameras. That means centuries. Why do you think photographers use polarised filters, take multiple shots, and use a plethora of accessories when working with intense light source? For the fun of it, perhaps?
Cameras use many lenses. Light trapped between lens components, the coating of the lenses, the materials use to fabricate the lenses, can all create aberrations in the output. And this holds true for cheap cameras to very expensive ones.
Look at this NASA-taken picture. Tell me what you see at the top of the picture. Right… (Purple) lens flare! If it can happen on a picture taken by a camera used by NASA, why could it not happen on an iPhone or any other cameras for that matter?