My parents don't want any of these features, and to be honest I don't really want them either.
I think the gestures are just not a great way to go for the elderly, for a few reasons. First, gestures are not explicit, you have to discover them, be told about them, see them used by someone else. Second (and this one deserves subclassing) is motor control. Finger-tapping speed, for one, declines notably with age. Fine motor control, for the gestures, can also be impaired with age. Third, there's a lack of feedback when using gestures: no haptics, no titles to relay during phone calls, no "you just closed this program by swiping up!"
Maybe my Samsungs had a lot of gestures I wasn't aware of but I feel like most things on the phone were very intuitive. Example, to end an incoming call and not just mute the ringtone you need to hit the power button. I didn't know about this for weeks and would drive around annoyed at a phone call ringing (but muted) in my car because it would stop my music playing.
On Android the buttons are right on the screen, I forget exactly but it's something like swipe left to mute, right to decline, etc.
I had to actually google "how to decline phone call on iphone" awhile back.. push the power button. If Android did that I'm pretty sure there'd be an arrow saying "PUSH THIS TO DECLINE."
And people in this post are talking about doing 3 finger taps. I didn't even know that was a thing..
I'll never forget the first time I accidentally turned on my flashlight at a dark movie theater and panicked because I hadn't learned that you can turn it on/off in the pull down bar yet. I think I had it on some button shortcut that if I hit a few times it'd turn on, and I didn't know what button I'd hit.