Only reason I can see for this vertical stretch is to add more battery to power a 4G device. Yes, it's more pixels, and a lot people want more pixels, but aspect ratio was a deep design choice made many moons ago by Jobs.
In the background, I see engineering getting a bit more clout under the industrial engineer CEO. And I wonder if culturally the institution is asking itself if perhaps nature truly cannot be pitched, bullied, or cajoled into what cannot be done. Cancer will do that to a family.