Huh, I don't think I've had to retry the back gesture once, it's always just worked. Are you using a case which makes it hard to access the screen edge or something?

Youre right, it must be the case. However it’s the official Apple leather one, so they probably should have tested this more?

> their “Done” or “Close” buttons on top, which are equivalent to “back”

Are they though? The former are for a modal, back is for a stack.

Apple likes to have a strong model of where things came from. Animations, verbs and gestures follow from that. In my experience of Android, things just appear/disappear with often arbitrary animations, which add nothing, it's like a cargo cult says an animation must go here but it doesn't matter which one. I prefer iOS's consistency here.

Sorry, I was talking about the positioning of the buttons, they are similarly “unreachable” like some “Back” buttons are on iOS. “Done” or “Close” should be reachable with one hand.