I'm not ashamed to say that is my favourite shonen, I love it =) By the way I suppose that you are talking of the latest episodes, while actually I followed the manga.
LoL.... I'm talking about when they were still 13 and Sakura still had long hair..... the furthest I got in the series was just before the events of the 4th Great Ninja War.
Ahaha! Ok I see but I love the entire work xD But if you follow the anime is objective that surely the first series is definitely better than the second one for the quality behind the production (where sadly the Shippuuden got too much fillers and low quality in the animation).
And about Sakura's hair, it's pretty strange that she never got back her long hairs (considering that the cut was something circumstantial in a very nice scene). Very likely the author favourited this design to the previous one.