Do you have a digital camera?

I bought one a Black Friday because it was a good price. But I also have one on my cell phone. So maybe I don't need it. I haven't opened the camera yet so I might return it. It is a Nikon 16 pixel L31. My cell phone is only 8 pixel.

I have 12 so it would be perfectly normal that my smartphone is just for calling and texting.

Why 12?

1 dSLR for the studio
1 dSLR for the outdoors
2 dSLRs for instructional use
1 mirrorless for playing around with old manual film lenses
1 bridge because I wasn't able to say no to $15
5 PNSs for instructional use
1 PNS for personal use because it's a Leica

My dog used to have a PNS but my mom took it for herself!

I have a regular film camera with a Holga lens and a old 4MP digital camera. I can't use the former because I'm still getting stuff to develop the film with (it's a large format so I can't just drop it in to my local film store where they only use 35mm film), and the latter has pretty much been supplanted by my phone - 20MP at best, 15MP average. Plus I don't have to worry about a media format that may be soon-to-be phased out (the digital camera uses XD cards whereas the standard AFAIK for digital cameras, phones, DSLRs have been either CF or any form factor of SD)

The ISO performance of your phone and the Nikon will be about the same. However, you've got a far better lens on the Nikon allowing you to get shots that are simply not possible with a phone. So when you put it into these terms, what's better an image from an inexpensive P&S or no image at all because your phone can't capture it?

The Nikon also has a real flash giving you more capabilities.
The Nikon does have more pixels, but this only means that you can print the image larger, or crop it and still maintain photo-quality image. Having more pixels doesn't mean a better or sharper image - that's all in the lens. More pixels can actually be a bad thing because as the amount increases (on the same sensor size) the pixels get smaller. As the pixels get smaller you will get more noise, more diffraction (blur) and a lower dynamic range. The pixels in your phone and in the nikon are about the same size, so noise will be the same.

Overall you should find it to be an improvement over your phone. Not only in image quality, but what you can do with it too. Phones have very wide angle lenses which are horrible at portraits. Your Nikon can zoom to a longer focal length allowing for much better results.