Jones aside, as I said, I tend to rest the phone on my pinkie. That way, I don’t need to “grab” it but it just kinda lays in my hand. This way, I can’t also comfortably reach the bottom buttons, which gets annoying if I hold the phone more in its middle by simply grabbing it.
So, maybe the point is not to get a phone that lets me reach the notification bar one handedly (which also works on the 7a, yes) but that this phone doesn’t allow me to reach the whole screen, top to bottom, without adjusting how I hold it.