Photos in iOS 18b6 has improved to ‘unpleasant, but tolerable’, at least once you turn off basically everything. I don't like the scrolling main screen, and I don't like that albums dismiss on scroll, but you can turn off enough of it now to make it work
@stroughtonsmith The redesign of the photos app is the absolute best feature in my opinion and I have actually taken the time to go through albums and organize/delete my photos content.