I agree with a lot of your points, especially comment flair and swiping gestures (I used the quick swipe left to collapse comment threads 100s of times a day). I'm not a mod so I never used those features of Alien Blue.

However, I like the organization of the app more. Pictures are automatically displayed in the feed and require no clicks (gif/gyf support is badly needed, though), it has infinite scrolling, and there are essentially two browse sections: one for the front page and the other for browsing individual subreddits. It's nice to be able to switch to a specific subreddit and then go back to the front page exactly where you were.

It also seems faster than Alien Blue. With AB I would encounter "dead" links that wouldn't load many times a day, and I haven't seen one with the new app. Pages and images load much quicker than AB.

I'm switching to the new app and hope they add new features soon.