Apollo's collapsing comment UI could be better - there's a shortcut to go to the next root comment, but I don't want to go to the next root comment, I want to go to collapse the current thread and see the next parent or grand-parent comment.

I'm guessing it's because I'm on an older iPhone 7, but Apollo's makes it very hard to write comments. In particular it loses my place when switching from Apollo, to another app to check something, then switching back. A message pops up about having saved the text, but frustratingly, it doesn't re-open the editor, so I have to go find the comment I was replying to and opening the compose reply there.

As to whether or not it's Apollo's "place" to make it easier/harder to scan, that makes no sense. Apollo's already an alternative UI, so it's already interjecting an opinion on the 'right' way to experience Reddit. That you might disagree with, eg making photo subs harder to scan, is a difference of opinion, but Apollo is already in that "place".

This specific behaviour is why I love Apollo. I do this exact thing when skimming through threads -- there's a couple of ways to do what you want to do:

Tap on the top of a comment to collapse that comment and any below it, assuming you haven't turned off "tap to collapse" in settings > general > comments.

Set a gesture for one of the swipe directions to collapse the current thread (I believe this exists, by default, as right-short-swipe) in settings > gestures.

Yep, best thing about Apollo!

The main struggle with reddit apps are the lack of mod tools. Only Alien Blue and Apollo have a simple method for working a queue. I still prefer Alien Blue's tools in this respect, but a lot of content fails to load with it.

Apollo should be the official app.