Sorry for the late response, I very seldom visit the forum. This is a known issue (feature). If you long hold the top of the panel and move it, then the side panels don’t activate. This is also a feature, for example if you are in fullscreen mode, you can open the command palette by pulling your finger down the tools panel.
I consider this a “feature” also because I couldn’t find a way around it without impacting other features in Obsidian.