For me I was always struggled to get the phone to do what I wanted. Either selecting or moving the cursor. It works better for me now. You drag to select, tap to place a cursor, or “pick up” the cursor for more precise placement. i still use the long touch on the spacebar though out of habit. And it’s where my fingers are naturally most of the time when I’m doing stuff with text.

The gestures became more single purpose.

I get it that we like the way things work and when they get changed it’s annoying.

But unless you think the phone has reached the perfect interface with no room for improvement, you should continue to expect things to change.

If you do think it’s perfect, well, good for you. Stop upgrading, and you will at least have a few years of stability.

A steering wheel is not the optimal steering device since we have cars with power steering, but changing that would make necessary for everyone to adapt to their vehicles again and would result in many accidents and many deaths.

Evolution is good, but the right pace is not always the fastest one. It can of course be faster for phone UIs than car UIs, but every change is still a potential hassle for all your users and should be carefully considered even if it is, objectively speaking, an improvement.