I have learn/relearn steps “10m 1d”. I generally review once a day in the morning with review ahead limit of 10m so that I can finish all my reviews in one session. Because the hard button averages the interval between the first and second step, a lot of my cards now end up due in ~12 hours, ie later the same day instead of in the same session or the next day.
I predominantly use AnkiDroid, and just recently started using v3 scheduler with the 2.16.0beta2 release, experimental v3 scheduler setting. I never noticed this behaviour in the AnkiDroid 2.15.6 version.
I would much prefer if the hard button used the current step.
If it used the current step when you’re on the first step, the again and hard buttons would show the same delay, and people think something is wrong when that happens.
People might be as likely to think something is wrong when the delay is different from the steps they have configured for the card? I assumed this was a bug in AnkiDroid v2.16.0beta2 experimental v3 scheduler until I realised the behaviour was the same in stable Anki.
Maybe the tradeoff of some people thinking there is a bug when there isn’t is worth it to avoid the impact the current behaviour has?
I think you could argue either approach may confuse some users. I’m afraid I still think the current behaviour is the more useful of the two, as it gives the user 4 choices instead of 3.