I guess this has been said before but I want to reiterate it here.
The 3 button navigation is simpler, much faster than gestures and less prone to input errors than gessure navigation.
It’s easier to use the phone one handed when using 3 buttons especially considering the size of phones nowadays.
The only real downside to the 3 button bar is the space it takes away from the screen. I can’t deny you get better immersion due increased screen size and gestures being intuitive (for me at least.
With that said I understand that depending on the brand the feel of gestures and their quality can vary (like between a pixel phone and a xiaomi device), but in terms of efficiency (and maybe slightly improved battery life due to less animations) and simplicity the 3 button navigation is still miles ahead.
On a large phone (so almost all of them) gesturing is much easier than reaching for a button. When I first switched it was slightly awkward because of muscle memory, but after a while gestures felt much better.