The default UI of Dolphin and Nautilus are quite similar at a glance, except:
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The “Split” button. Dual-pane is one of Dolphin’s greatest strength. OTOH, Nautilus’s “Copy to” actually opens another Nautilus window for you to select the destination. So if there is a checkbox for “Use this window as the destination for all Copy To actions”, that would be similar enough to a dual-pane.
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The Places pane in Nautilus auto-hides when the window is narrow enough. Could be pretty handy. OTOH, I can resize the pane in Dolphin, or toggle it with a shortcut (F9).
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Nautilus has two “search” buttons. The leftmost one for “global”, and the one near the right for “from this folder”. Makes some sense, but could also be confusing.
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Nautilus also has two menu buttons. Similar to 3, the hamburger on the left for “global”, the three-dots in the address box for “this folder”. Dolphin has the hamburger menu in its traditional position. Easier to find, but also a much larger menu.
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Dolphin has “filter” besides “search”. Is it clear to users when to use which?
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All the extra functionalities Dolphin has under the hood: grouping, terminal, preview / info pane, service menus, customization…