I haven’t used the Photos app much over the years but am starting to a lot more lately. I don’t notice a ton of differences in the Photos app. There’s no way I’ve found to see meta data that I’ve noticed. I see the option to turn most images into Spacial Photos in there and there is a menu option for Auto Dimming that I’m guessing was there before and I just didn’t notice.
I do see an option to allow you to create new Albums which I was able to get to from the Collections menu item on the left and also on that menu there is an option to see categories of items like your Hidden Items (that’s protected), Recently Deleted, Recently Shared, Recently Deleted, Recently Edited and items the system has identified by type (Handwriting, Illustrations, QR Codes, Documents, etc) plus you can see a break down of items by Media Type (Videos, Selfies, Live Photos, Portrait, Panoramas, etc.) Again those last two listing may have been there before but I didn’t notice them until I spent some time in the app looking to find a way to view Meta Data.
Without really knowing the iOS Photos app inside and out nor paying a lot of attention to the Photos app in the v1.x line that’s about all I can give you.