Unfortunately in this case “refined” means oversimplified. Avatars have been overloaded to also be the selection for bulk operations and also require Gravatar. This means if you don’t want Gravatar avatars you get no avatars at all and you can’t select multiple messages from the inbox.

Overloading the avatar as a selection instead of sender search or message selection is jarring and violates the principle of least surprise.

You also can’t quickly search by sender by tapping the avatar in a message. This is a huge regression in functionality that completely breaks my mobile workflow.

Disappointing for people who value stability over change for the sake of change. It’s also a big loss for the privacy-conscious to turn Gravatar on by default.

This is very disappointing from a company that is generally very user obsessed. Big swing and a big miss.