I do think however that the extra width in Landscape will now require a completely different interface. Adding 88 extra screen pixels means that simply rotating and stretching the interface has crossed the line from "looks kinda weird" to "looks terrible".
What was the situation before? Absolute positioning via x/y? Really?
The old way was versatile actually. What it lacked was being able to relate views to anything aside from it's parent container.
This reminds me a bit of the argument that 90 feet is the optimal size for a baseball infield, as evidenced by the number of close plays at first base after a ground ball to an infielder. In actuality, though, the high frequency of close plays is the result of how the infielders choose to position themselves.
You can reach all four corners of the screen with your thumb not because of the size of the phone, but because of how you choose to hold it. Change the size of the phone, and you'll naturally change your grip.
Increasing the screen size diagonally would have given a much better power of two increase in surface, which is desperately needed with iPhones (I have a 4.6inch device and feel that the perfect size would be just a tiny bit bigger than that). There was no need for aspect-ratio fragmentation.
If they didn't want to increase the device width, they should have tried doing like Motorola RAZR M and reduce the bezel.