Two part question here, i’ve been on and off photography for about 8-10 years and while i don’t know everything and anything about my camera, everything about composition and editing, I feel i know enough to edit photos the way i like and making them decent compositions. at this point, should i start thinking about investing into a laptop/iPad and lightroom rather than relying on the free portions of editing apps to create better edits?
If you plan to just upload to social media, then the phone should be fine for editing. You likely wont get any noticeable change moving to a laptop in regards to overall quality using the features (exposure, temp, highlights, etc…) your already using.
Using paid lightroom on a computer does have lots new features (AI noise reduction, etc) which are nice, but ultimately wont make your photos much better without lots of knowledge on how to use said tools.
Another big feature of computer lightroom is better file management. If this is a problem for you on the phone, this alone is a great bump in productivity if you ever need to edit a lot of photos or want to find an older photo.
All that being said, adding a laptop to the mix wont improve your photos, it will just life easier on the back end. I think its worth it to have a computer if you plan to be into this hobby long term, but I wouldnt bother breaking the bank on it, buy it when its convenient financially.