Definitely a problem especially when zooming out. Aperture closes down, thus reducing the amount of light. Focusing is awful when compared to Note 20. And Note 20 focusing bad compared to Note 8 (I still use the 20 and 8). So as technology moves forward, it is not always better.
In the blurry shot it looks out of focus, suggested by the apparent paired edges, it would be unusually lucky for dirt to cause the obvious dual overlapped image but expected from poor focus (probably very short focal point). There isn't any adjustable aperture iris on the camera as far as I've seen, although the digital zoom changes the real sensor area used, hence the light magnitude reduces but that's not aperture so it doesn't change depth of field. The best option I know of is to touch and hold the screen at a point you want to be in focus, I'd expect one or two circles to display and turn yellow when the focal point is selected. It might cycle the whole focus range and take a second or two to complete but if there is as much contrast as in the examples it should be able to focus on any line of contrast. If the camera mode supports multi-point (AF-M) and center focus (AF-C) modes you can experiment with each, I would expect AF-C to be most use with the ranges to potential subjects in the examples so a chosen subject focal point by touching and holding it on the screen would be best chance. It might help to change to the wrong subject by touching and holding on the screen to focus on the wrong thing then touch and hold on the correct subject instead of repeating attemps to select the same subject.
It should be easy to verify if the focal point is too short (close to the camera). Put your hand not holding the phone into the scene without covering the cameras but only an inch or two from the phone. Move it sowly closer and further from the camera warching the screen for a point where the hand is in-focus. If you find the focal point I'd hope just removing your hand from the scene would cause re-focus on the real scene, though reliability of that may depend whether the focus method includes optical range finding rather than only image "sharpness". If range finding is used then objects in the scene at a variety of distances that are only a few inches apart can fool it about what the intended subject is. If that was the case photographs of landcapes with nothing in the foreground should not experience the problem (as a probable verification range finding of short focal length subjects is a likely cause for other scene types).
