The new Android redesign has clearly only been designed with bottom address bar users in mind, and has severe UX issues when in top-address bar mode. Additionally, with many UI elements spread out, the UX is further compromised when using the phone with one hand.
Starting with the home page. With the top address bar, If you open the menu, the menu comes up from the bottom, and is largely centralized to the bottom. Why? This does not make sense, considering you just pressed the menu button at the top of the screen. The menu "spawn" from wherever the menu button is (either top, or bottom). This requires me to push the menu button, reposition my hand, and then slide my thumb all the way down to the bottom of the screen to open settings. It's poor UX, that did not exist before.
The issues persist when you are on a website. The menu still opens from the bottom, and instead of putting the navigation controls right near the menu button (which it does in bottom address bar mode!), it puts them floating about 1/3rd of the way down the screen. This does not make any sense from a usability perspective, and is inconsistent with bottom address bar behavior (which has the nav buttons right next to it). Not to mention that things like history and bookmarks are still at the very bottom.
The problems persist with the new tab page. There is an absolute ton of padding/dead-space between the top of the browser window and the tab ...tabs? It looks like something is missing, and it's unfinished. Even worse, the "New Tab" button is at the very bottom of the screen again when if you are in top address-bar mode, you just opened the tab page from the top of the screen. This is very poor UX. Thirdly, the tab previews have been made unnecessarily large. There is little to gain by having them that big, and coupled with the unnecessary padding and wasted space, you can only see a handful of tabs at a time. This is a regression.
Here is a proposed fix for the menu for top address-bar users. Make the menu come from the top, and invert the order of the options. Doing this will make the UX consistent, and identical between top and bottom address bar users. It will reduce the amount of thumb movements, make it easier to use with one hand, and make it less jarring when you push a button at the top, and the menu appears from the bottom.
Finally, all of this wasted space in the "Tabs" page needs to be put to use. There's only like 4 options in the "..." menu, and you have all of this space up top not doing anything in top address-bar mode. Just put the "New Tab" button up there, and break out the other options. More visibility, more discoverability, more accessibility, makes use of wasted space. Additionally, shorten up the tab previews a bit. By moving the button into wasted space, and slightly shortening the previews, you can get 6 previews on one page.
