While the devs haven’t explained (at least here) the exact reasons, the theories given above seem reasonable. Even given those, though, I don’t see why one couldn’t design the program to have an autosave frequency, but ignore that at moments when you switch between notes and save anyway, so that none of the caching system breaks. This might even be implemented in a way that it also hurriedly saves as the program is closing (delaying closure very slightly) to avoid the slew of problems which would arise from not being saved before closing.
This sort of frequency adjustment would be nice for me, though I’m using Syncthing and I think I can adjust the frequency there to avoid draining my phone battery as much.
Now, all that being said, I think I understand why the devs haven’t replied much concerning this. See, they’ve designed a nice pay-for feature to sync your vaults for you, and are probably doing everything they can to make that feature stable and excellent, despite the frequent saves. So for those of us finding cheap workarounds, it might be considered a bit disrespectful to them (my apologies), especially given that we’re demanding a feature for which the primary need hails from custom sync solutions, and is less dire for those who are using their official solution.
Though, a few of you have made this request independent of sync workaround problems, and that should warrant additional consideration.
Also, I suppose I should confirm most of you with sync issues are using workarounds - are you? Or are some of you using the official sync solution and still having problems? If so, speak up! This would be an important point to distinguish your post and highlight the need for some feature relating to this.
Also, does anyone know if the official Obsidian Sync follows the same frequency as local saves? My guess would be that it doesn’t, but is much more carefully tuned. If so, I may actually be happy to pay for it once I’m making money off of my projects and can support it! I am fond of solutions that just work, and I want to support the devs of good projects like this one, especially when they LET you do workarounds, even if they may or may not like it. So, my thanks - I’ll try to get my work to a point where I can support your work!