For what it's worth, I like the shorter elf lifespan. I like the idea of a long-lived race that the PCs can look up to discover the truth about past events, but I don't think they should be as common or as easy to find as the elves are implied to be in most D&D settings.
The new mechanics do present a tighter focus for the elf. The wild step ability emphasizes his speed, and the elven accuracy ability emphasizes, well, elven accuracy. What I find quite interesting is that most of the new powers tend to be "active" in that the player decides when to use them: when shifting into difficult terrain, for example, or when re-rolling an attack that the player thinks is going to miss.
On the other hand, the abilities that have disappeared - immunity to sleep, saving throw bonus against enchantment effects, and ability to detect secret doors - are mostly "passive" abilities in that the player doesn't actively decide to use them (beyond reminding the DM that he has them). In most cases, the burden is on the DM to remember to give the PC the benefit of the abilities when they become applicable. In a way, I think this represents a shifting of the responsibility of remembering what the PC can do from the DM to the player. It might not make the game less complicated for the player, but it certainly would make the DM's life easier.
As for the group awareness ability, I'm guessing that it was thrown in there to help foster group cohesiveness because every once in a while, one player will be thankful that another player has an elf PC. I wouldn't be surprised if we see more similar "selfless" abilities cropping up in future. As for slowing down game play, perhaps the best thing to do would be to just make a normal Perception roll first. Whether the PC is within 5 squares of an elf ally is only going to matter 5% of the time.
