As said before, we all have different use cases and expectations.
Anyway about the things you said, here is my use of them:
Not really. Now you have to sacrifice the left side of the phone for events if you want to restore it. But with my hands it is difficult to make a left border swipe with right hand, and right border swipe with left hand. So with this scheme, it is difficult for me to reach events view when I hold it in one hand, and difficult to change app when hold in the other.
Previous scheme allowed me to change app easily from any hand, and reach events quite easily with both hands.
And this will be increasingly be seen as screen size grows.

That is what I am fighting all the time but in the reverse order. I changed a lot of time the ringtone while wanting to change media volume.

That could be a great solution.

Actually I was. Before they changed the way the volume works. I had something like 3 ambiences. When going work, I switched to the "work" one, which fixed the ringtone volume to what I wanted. From this point I could listen to music with my earphone and change the volume all day long without risking at one point to change the ringtone volume and have my phone ringing loud in the middle of the workspace. And the same when coming back home to restore loud settings.
This workflow with ambiances was described in one of jaakko roppola's posts here : http://jaakkoroppola.blogspot.fr/201...-looks_12.html
It was fitting my needs quite well. A lot better than the current solution (where I stop using the ambiances as it doesn't lock the volume anymore).