I don’t know, GNOME 3 on laptops with proper gestures is a joy to use. Also, afaik Phosh is fully rewritten and hardly has anything in common with gnome, even the common apps are inferior to use on mobile.
You need wayland GNOME (actually not wayland per se, but libinput that can properly process gestures, which can be hacked into XOrg, but I haven’t tried that), and there were a few gestures during GNOME 3, but it got revamped into a really productive environment with GNOME 40.
What I like best is the 3 finger swipe up, for the same view as you would get with the Super key, and the 3 finger left right swipe for changing between desktops (this latter may not be showcased in the video I linked)
Basically I disagree. On phone the titlebars actually make sense. Even on a laptop with a touchscreen, which is probably the most ideal desktop-like platform, I still find GNOME 3 annoying.
I’m not necessarily a fan of client side decorations, but with some buttons going into the titlebar, I don’t find it annoying at all. But of course UI/UX is subjective to a point.