I am up to date (dec 5th security update, android 13. Build number is too tedious to type out 🙃). I still experience this issue. This is coming from someone who has been on a full-screen device for 2 years prior using on-screen nav buttons, and never had an issue using them on that device (and ofc didn't back when we had hardware nav bars).
Looking visually, the bar is a bit small, and an option to make it bigger would be useful. But I also think making the area around the icons on the bar within the actuation zone would help. If I'm, say 1/3 of the way off between one button and the adjacent one, it's pretty clear I want the one I'm 2x closer to. That should actuate, but it doesn't. As for vertical distance, I think the dead zone is probably still big, although I'd say a larger bar is also a viable solution for that if there is concern of that resulting in more mistypes/clicks that were intended for the apps and not the bar
