You must live in a huge neighbourhood. Your points are valid, though you can now choose to keep chats archived even when receiving a message. Settings > Chats > Keep chats archived.

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WhatsApp seems very conservative with adding new features. I generally feel the features they do decide to add are all pretty useful. Telegram on the other hand doesn’t ever seem to slow down with the new features. Many of them seem great, but just as many I would never use. I’m still wondering why Telegram won’t introduce end-to-end encryption as a default.