The design philosophy of one UI is supposed to be using the lower portion of the display as the interaction area and the upper portion of the display as the viewing area.
The separate panel places notifications in the viewing area, meaning I have to shift may hand or use two hands to reach the top notification.
Perhaps a larger Clock/Date would shift these notifications downward into the interaction area.
I agree, I understand why they are separate panels for quick settings and notifications, but when you combine them together you get better ease of us. The notifications are just too high on notification shade to click some times
