This should make it easier to perform options on a single message. This would behave similar to Telegram X
I'm curious which of these two designs people prefer

I prefer Tap 1, but I would do swipe right for timestamps. Very little usage of that and it feels out of place with out command from Tap menu.
+1 from me for Tap 1 as well.
I'd prefer tap 2. However having a timestamp directly under "Info" seems kinda redundant - the user would tap Info anyway to see the message details.
I feel like tap 2 is more in line with the Material Design Guidelines.
A fair comment regarding the Material Design Guideline aspect but one of the reasons why I started looking at QKSMS in the first place is I didn't like the stock app. Surely the "look and feel" of QKSMS is in part what differentiates it from other products so not being a clone of every other app may be beneficial so long as it remains visually clean and intuitive.
Another benefit that I would see in Tap 1 is that it doesn't obliterate the selected message when active.
Would a choice in the Settings be possible? I prefer the second choice, but the first choice is cleaner and I might want to switch to that some time.
A bit of an aside. In many cases in various apps, I often find using solely icons for the sake of aesthetic is not as beneficial as someone else might think. That might just be me though, since I despise it when guesswork is passed off as intuitive.
Personally I prefer option 2. In option 1, I might have to take an extra moment to remember what each icon refers to.