Home Bar stops working once iPhone is unlocked

Recently my home bar stopped working randomly once I unlock my phone. At first it was fixable with a restart, then only resetting the phone to factory settings helped. Now it is back.

It seems once I unlocked the phone, the bottom most part of the screen stops registering touch at all. I already updated iOS, still happening. I can also test this with my keyboard, the language settings can be selected, but not if I select the bottom half, which shows, the screen just stops reacting at that area. the home bar does work when the phone and therefore image is sideways.

Now it doesn't seem like a hardware issue as I can still unlock the screen with the home bar.

And all I found was another post from 2 years ago with the same problem, but unresolved