well, i just checked jolla-camera, and it ignored it. it does use the volup button though.
i mapped eventid=201 to cam_full in sf-button-monitor
when 10III came out and never looked back.
more importantly, unless i am missing something important, using the physical button cannot affect the camera1 focus model issue. only updated binaries from sony can truly fix it, as the bug affects stock sony android, aosp, and sailfish. (of course, switching to camera2 api everywhere would bypass the issue completely and is the ideal solution, but the bug would still be there if you went looking for it)
i DO use the physical button sometimes (using patched mce or sf-button-monitor), and before i found out about camera2 working, it made focusing very slightly harder because of the slight motion of the camera from pressing the button