As for the albums thing, my mother in law loves that so much. As an elderly lady she loves creating videos of photos taken based on time periods and the like so for her that's a killer feature. I'd be willing to bet that they have this feature on by default because it would require an index to be built if it was re-enabled and showing a blurb about it needing to build up an index is something they didn't want.
Why the hell did Android switch to a gesture system though. It's so bad. I've been unable to change the volume on a video when volume controls on a web page are too far to the left because the swipe motion triggers the "back" gesture in the browser. Never once have a had isues with the old Android bottom bar or iOS gestures.