Ok, now I understand you have different preferences for the alternatives.
I think only the counter button would be a proper solution.
Unfortunately, the devs had removed the old way last year, before a better solution is in place.
It’s obvious that many users need a way to notice new incoming emails from un-known senders. Whithout allowing every such email to disrupt the user!
I would even prefer not to be interrupted (notified) by (longer) classic emails from known contacts, and think that there should be a better default to handle chats and emails separately (i.e. @r10s, no pop-ups for emails from known contacts, if the user merely configures to have classic emails displayed in a separate list), just list the (longer) classic emails from known contacts silently, as icons within corresponding chats (if existing) and provide that “new email counter button” in the main view to see them all:
And once again, all the options required to solve these use-case problems have been in the wiki for long: