I came to the same conclusion. I still use my SLR for things that need a longer lens, but for photographing miniatures my phone is just easier.
As to hosting, I personally use two services: Flickr and Imgur. There are free and pay versions of both, and both have their quirks. Flickr is mostly aimed at photographers, so the hosting options are a little more tailored to what a professional photographer might want to share a portfolio. And there are some community aspects that help photographers connect with one another. That said, they absolutely allow deep linking, as is necessary when hosting images to be used elsewhere. And they even have some tools to give you the code to make that easy. (Though they do always add links that take a view to their site if you click through. You can remove it. Sometimes I do. Other times I leave some or all of it, depending on the circumstances.) Flickr gives you maybe a thousand images total on the free version and beyond that largish but not infinite limit you have to pay. But they do have aps for most phones that I think means you can auto-upload. (I use a really old phone that is no longer supported, but even when it was I didn't auto-upload because I like to process stuff and I'm a little selective about what goes where.) Overall, I think they're my preferred option. (Most of my pics on here are hosted on Flickr.)
Imgur is almost a social network in its own right, where people share memes and gifs. The pay version removes ads and maybe has one or two other features, but I use the free version here so I'm less familiar with the pro features. But it works fine for hosting, since the community there is so focused on the sorts of memes you would share on other social networks anyway. (Like Reddit or Facebook.) The toolkit is a little more limited, at least in the free version, and it's a little harder to get a clean link to post somewhere else, but it's still doable. (I usually right click on the image and open it in a new tab and then just grab the url from the browser. If you grab it from the image I think you get a thumbnail. Had some trouble with that, thus the weird workaround.) They have some sharing options, but they're more focused on dragging you to their site than Flickr, since its more ad driven and fewer people have pro accounts. It's still useful, and I tend to use it for things like graphics or WIP shots that I don't want to put in my public photo feed. (The badges I make for this site, for instance, are hosted on Imgur.)
Anyway, I look forward to seeing more of your phots!
