In its new version the messenger reinvented the reply and link previews systems, but also removed several important features while doing it.
You can’t open a photo from the link preview in the built-in media viewer, unless it’s a direct link to an image
For example, people often replace twitter.com links to fx/vxtwitter.com, and instagram.com links to ddinstagram.com links to embed text and media from these websites right into the messenger so the recipients don’t have to open Twitter’s and Instagram’s slow websites just to view them. The fact these services exist and that they are actively used shows how much users do not want to follow links that load slow third-party websites.
If you try to tap an image inside a link in the latest version of Telegram for any OS, it will open the linked website instead, which prevents you from viewing the picture in full size without cropping inside the messenger. Furthermore, in Telegram for Android a link with a video in it gets a minimized preview, which doesn’t allow you to view the attached video, and you have to change the link preview snippet size to «Expanded» every time you attach such link. On Telegram for Android and iOS, you can’t select text inside link previews anymore either.
The change expands the link’s active zone but removes a popular option users rely on. It would be good if users could decide on their own if they want to open the link or expand the image, simply by tapping the corresponding area of the image. As a side effect of these changes, you can’t save images from link previews to gallery anymore either.
Vote to bring the feature back: Allow opening media directly from the preview. – Bugs and Suggestions (telegram.org)
You can’t jump back to the message you are replying to by tapping its preview above the input field
When a user starts replying to a message, a snippet of that message is displayed above the input field. Before the update, tapping that area scrolled the chat to the message to the original message. Now Telegram changed the behavior so doing the same actions opens reply options instead, which makes writing replies to long messages harder, especially in crowded chats. The preview also doesn’t support listening to the voice message you are replying to.
Telegram could move reply settings into a dedicated button on the panel or add a button into the reply options window instead (such button is present in Telegram Desktop).
Vote to bring the feature back: Reply box doesn’t let you jump back to the message you are replying to – Bugs and Suggestions (telegram.org)
Worse forwarding options UX
Before the update, forwarding options («Hide Sender Name» and «Hide Caption» for media) were controlled using checkmarks. In the new version they were replaced with less indicative buttons. The new buttons have no color indication, and you can only judge their state from the crossed out icon and its label.
Such UI element would need a clear graphical switch or a noticeable icon highlighting. For example, the icon for «Hide Caption» could become bright when the caption is enabled and grey when it is removed.
Another important downgrade: the forwarding options menu lost «Send Message» option, replacing it with «Apply Changes», which acts exactly the same as if a user would simply tap outside the menu to close it. With the new UI sending a message using forwarding options takes one click more than it used to be.
Colorful reply blocks are too dazzling and are not readable on some user themes
Telegram Premium users now can recolor their username and reply blocks. The choice for recoloring consists not just of regular colors but also two- and three-color combos, which create colorful patterns along the reply line to separate the block.
Telegram didn’t make it possible for themes to redefine the color combos, though. Which means that if a user chose a color theme for their reply that consists of two or three colors, there’s no way for a theme to redefine these colors. Such way of things makes the reply blocks too dazzling and even makes the text poorly readable on some user themes.
The list of the color combinations is loaded from the server, so it’s hard to make it work with custom themes, but there’s a compromise that could be made: it would vastly improve color combos compatibility with themes if Telegram added controls for theme developers over brightness and saturation of the colors in general, so the text would look at home and would be readable even on colorful themes while also maintaining its custom color tint.