If you have a phone with multiple lenses, try the 3x lens. I'm on a Samsung (S24ultra I think) which has 2 wide lenses (.6 and 1.0), a normal lens (3.0x) and a zoom lens (10x). There's also some software zoom settings that don't actually change the lenses (2x, 5x, 30x, and 100x) which can and should be ignored. On an iphone, I think the 5x lens is the right one to use.
A Canon Rebel would be fine as long as you're not using a wide angle lens. The focal length is the issue, not the camera. If you put a kit lens at the 18mm setting on your Rebel, you'd have the same issue as your phone. You wanna use something like a 50mm to 85mm fixed lens. On an 18-55 kit lens (common with many cameras), somewhere around 35mm would be a great focal length.