I hadn't thought about homophones, that's a good point (and due to our quirky phonology there are many of those in French). That being said even in proper French we lose the distinction in the plural and I don't think that's really much of an issue, "le" and "la" both become "les": "les peaux" and "les pots" are pronounced exactly the same. I believe German does the same thing with plural "die".

Clearly if you told me the strictly correct sentence "les téléphones sont dans les pots" I would never wonder if you meant "the phones are in the pots" or "the phones are in the skins" because we don't generally put phones in people's skins (yet).

But that's using a whole different noun, albeit one that sounds similar. In this case using the correct gender won't help, especially if the sentence could make sense with both nouns.

They are homophones so they are different nouns but have the same sound. The only audible difference is the article gender. I think the original point was the (audible) gender doesn't change the meaning much in German vs French.