Looks great with professionally shot, high res photos. Most of the photos that will be shared out in the wild won't look nearly this good in the new layout. Same thing happened with the Cover Photo.
Yup. We always have to talk our designers down because they use 9000x14000 pictures when designing layouts - the true test of a layout is whether it survives a crappy blown-up cellphone picture in that slot.
So true, but hopefully, as phones -- which are replacing digital cameras for many people -- up their resolution, such designs will look better for people with a broader range of mobile devices!