Wow, I’ve never even used Sync but from the screenshot of the Reddit app on Google Play it’s one of those UIs so good that make you want to use it. I’m currently fine with the Lemmy PWA but the more feature-complete Reddit apps that get “ported” to be used with Lemmy the better, especially to ease the transition for new users.
Definitely not, first of all I love pastel colors and, on the more practical side of things, at least for touch interfaces I do prefer to have some padding: even on larger screens (my current phone is 6.7") I tend to prefer larger and more padded interfaces to avoid hitting the wrong one (and that’s the main reason why I don’t like to type on a phone that much).
So I might even be in the minority but having a control center with larger but less buttons on each page is exactly what I prefer, I don’t mind having to scroll if it’s easier to toggle what I need to.