one confirmed bug in telephone app, one in control panel

Are you using one of the latest iPhones which have dual-SIM capabilities?

If so, my guess is that what you are seeing in the phone app is an indicator of whether the call was made/received on either the primary or secondary SIM; and that this is displayed regardless of whether you are actually using 2 SIMs.

I can confirm the phone bug that is really annoying, will write to apple about this, honestly shows they don't have many if any internal testers using VoiceOver if this wasn't spotted.
as to the bug you call in the control panel, not quite sure what you mean? is this iPhone or mac related?

Hi! I also get the text quoted above, "user label primary", for calls which are listed in the Recents tab of the Phone app on my iPhone 6, but I noticed, after reading this thread, that this text only appears for calls which I have made or received from 20 September 2018 onwards. Given that IOS 12 was released in mid-September, I was wondering, is this extra unexpected text somehow connected with the arrival of IOS 12.0? I know we probably can't answer that question, but it may not be a coincidence that my recent calls before September 2018 don't have that extra text among their details when they appear in the Recents list.

Yes. I have iPhone X X and see the text from a call from yesterday. Hope this is a bug. Maybe they will fix it in iOS 14 in 2 years.

The timer bug in control center doesn’t appear to exist for me. A double tap opens the clock app and a 3D touch brings up an interface that I used successfully to set and start a countdown.

Since I have a dual SIM phone, I only here “primary” instead of the text reported by others in the phone app’s recent call list.

Having it say primary does not bother me. It reads the person's name which is all I care about. As for the timer, as long as you flick down and hit the open controls button on the roter, it seems to work just fine.

I do notice the addition of the word primary in the recents list. I believe this indicates that this came from your primary sim, for most of us, this will always be the case. I strongly suspect there is an icon here, and that is what is being described. If you get a call from FaceTime, or something like Google, it does not read this. Might be worth reporting, but I would mention that you might prefer it neglect telling you primary if you only have one SIM card.
Could you give a little more detail on your report of the timer. I have the timer on my control center, and I had no difficulty setting it. My defaulted to 30 minutes, I could manipulate the hour, minute, and second pickers with up and down gestures, and the start worked fine. I am using an iPhone XS, and sometimes mileage does vary from device to device, so that could be a difference as well.

I echo number 4 saying that there must not be anyone using voice over in their test areas as there would be no other excuse that could plausibly be made as to why this one wasn't caught and summarily squashed onsite. This one realllllly drives me crazy. I'm using 12.1 IOS and getting this happening after November 1. I'd really like them to fix this. It is very extremely annoying. Another odd thing that I saw today is that on some of the recents that have the user_label_primary don't list from where the call is originating and some of the ones between Friday and Sunday do list that information. Part of it might be a difference in that those that are not listing where the calls are coming from are the outgoing calls but either way I just want this bug squashed and never to be allowed to live ever again.

Timer and Alarm Function initially does not work on my 5S. Work around I found was Open Control Panel, tap Timer\Alarm etc, hit home button, open app switcher and flick to Timer\Alam then it will let you set it etc