If you open the phone dialer application and select the contacts list from there, you can open contacts in portrait mode. Can you view the contacts in portrait mode when you open the contacts application directly, NOT through the phone dialer?

In the phone dialer way of opening contacts, when the contacts are in portrait mode, there is an alphabetical index on the right side column to quickly jump to a particular letter. This doesn't appear in the landscape mode. Is there a way to get it in landscape view of the contacts? In landscape view maybe they figured you can just hit the letter on the QWERTY and it jumps to that letter, but this requires that you slide out the QWERTY. It would be nice ot have the alphabetical tabs in landscape mode with the keyboard closed.