Lots of people can’t tell the difference between something looking awesome and working well.
That's also what I suggested in my answer to onion2k below. I agree, it's not hard. But it does require their design team to overcome some instinctive minimalism.
Common phrases heard on Linux Desktop software issue trackers and forums:
"Why would you want that?" "You don't want to do that, do it <the way I do it>." "Works on my machine." "PRs are welcome." "We've rejected your PR because there isn't any demand for this."
This is the community that thinks .desktop files are a good idea and largely uses the GUI as a really fancy tmux. They're hopeless.
The problem with just showing a bar at the bottom is that iOS already uses a bar at the bottom to invoke the app switcher. Maybe a small triangle in the corner would help.
How did they not test this on 5 different screen sizes, of which two it's entirely un-intuitive?
Or Apple could do the right thing and go back to a 3.5" screen size on all their phones, no exceptions. Even a 4" screen size would be better than these clown-phone monstrosities. IOS could then just dead-pixel all pixels outside of the center 3.5" screen on all existing clown-phones for backwards compatibility.
People it's clearly an unpopular opinion, and those bigger screens literally fly off the shelves...
Right now I am looking at the Sony Xperia 1 as it seems to be the best "smallish" phone now a days.
Yes, I know I am in the minority.
Nope. A few years ago I used to really want a large-screened phone. Then I got one with a 5" screen and found out its clunky and awful to carry around. Standardizing the screen back to 4" or 3.5" would greatly improve my tolerance for carrying it around and, if the resolution were also standardized, would greatly simplify UX design.