Regarding homescreen and widgets:
The problem is with the free positioning of the widgets if I understand correctly. On rotation they might collide/overlap or end up partly outside the screen. I don't think we want to get rid of the free positioning or have resizing widgets.

The location of the widgets are somehow stored by the OS. Could it be a start to have two separate location storages, one for portrait and one for landscape? After adding a widget and rotating the screen the first time, the user can move the new widget to suit also the other orientation.

This would mean the user has to configure the homescreen for both orientations and might be a bit annoying if a lot of widgets are added in one go, but at least when adding only one I don't think this would bug me as a user too much.

Cons, from the top of my head:
* Width of widgets would be limited to 480 pixels, minus whatever padding is needed.
* Any animations on rotation would need some thought (the widgets wouldn't only rotate but also translate/move). Should be able to look fluid but at what computational cost I don't know.

An extension (not replacing the possibility for manual repositioning) might be to attempt some sort of semi-intelligent auto-repositioning of the widgets by the software. Probably a mess to get working well and the gain (getting a "good suggestion for positions in the other orientation") is probably not great. Note that this would not need to be triggered on every rotation, only when changes to the homescreen had been made.


Well, I tried.