The physical home button is, no bullshit, one of the greatest pieces of UI ever. No, I am not kidding, I really think that. It’s crazy to me that they abandoned it, the gestures that replace its functionality are overall-worse and cluttering the gesture system with even more of them is bad for the overall UX.
I agree with this, while also thinking it was basically physical-enough that the home button still served the same UI purpose about as well as before. But yes it was a step down from the real button.
The haptic sensor is almost as good as the physical button, and the trade off of not having to worry about it breaking (which was likely after a few years with the physical ones) is well worth it for me.