@vaartis i like gtk, but I cant tell you if its better in that regard, because I'm unable to understand your issue.
@vaartis gtk with libhandy works well on phone screens
@vaartis they moved the upstream location to the gnome git https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/libhandy/ here it isn't archived.
And yes phosh is using it. (Along with a lot of other applications, including ones made my gnome.
I think the first app i saw libhandy was gnome-clocks and I think their implementation is very good.