Four Inches

I'm intrigued by the rumors of a new iPhone with a four inch diagonal screen accomplished by making the screen taller while maintaining the width and pixel density.

I've been particularly enjoying the mockups that show how this change would work with existing apps. This one from modilwar on The Verge Forums, and this one from overdrivedesign are both great. However, no one seems to be tackling what I think is the most interesting question: landscape.

The mockups from modilwar show landscape video (which is easy, the proposed change is great for video) and suggest that things like games could simply pad the existing screen with black bars until developers make updates. I agree with all of that as far as it goes.

However, I'm much more interested in how 'normal' apps will handle the new ratio in landscape. For example, what will happen to the landscape keyboard? It seems like there are two options:

1. Make all the buttons wider
2. Introduce the split keyboard from the iPad

The split keyboard seems like the better option to me, and so I introduce the results of my (far from expert) mockup of a four inch iPhone with a split landscape keyboard.

Original

Mockup

Looking at the space available, and comparing to the iPad's split keyboard, I suspect that if Apple goes this route they might actually add in a few additional keys.