Why GNOME refugees love Xfce (Register)

Think you misinterpret those statements, GNOME 3 is not for mobile devices. Some things changed to make it easier using bad input devices, like the trackpad on a laptop. Some things are to support tablets (the hiding of mouse cursor in 3.2). Some developers (hadess) really like tablets and ensure that is supported and blog about it. However, just because there is some support for "mobile devices" does not mean GNOME 3 is for mobile devices. IMO 3.2 would be terrible on a phone and wonder if the on screen keyboard from 3.2 is good enough to rely on it on a tablet.

Not sure why you refer to "GNOME developers", but think I am not part of that. I've said elsewhere already that I'm part of the GNOME release team... though don't think that matters much in a discussion and would result in wrong assumptions. Meaning: being part of the release team is not about seeing everything with a glare of sunshine (marketing team).