Actually, this gets to one of my pet peeves about the post-Gingerbread Android OS's. It used to be the menu button and all controls were along the bottom edge. Unlike with iOS my Android screen could grow larger and larger and all controls remained near my finger. Then it seemed like someone in Android development wanted to make the blasted UI feel like iOS and put menu controls along the top, complete with an iOS-esk back-arrow icon.
I wanted to ride Caltrain down to Google HQ and raise a ruckus! They needed to break out of the design thinking from a dedicated-to-small-screens-OS and give us something new and more appropriate for larger devices:
I want my notifications and menus and launchers accessible from the lower corners
I want the OS to provide left and right-hand modes
I want more radial menus than the browser's 'experimental' mode
Any of those would put an end to the too-large argument.
The new design language they've implemented post-ICS is very much focused at adaptation to different screen sizes, though you are correct about menu options being farther away now in many cases.
The Action Bar, for example, is modular and expandable. It will hide and show icons, labels, and overflow menu items as needed to intelligently preserve padding space in the UI while displaying as many action items as possible. Developers can choose to enable the "split Action Bar," such as it is used in the Gmail app, which moves a group of action/overflow items to an action bar at the bottom of the current Activity. The changes they made around the ICS launch work hand-in-hand with APIs such as the Fragments API, which allows one application to adapt the Activity stack and lifecycle to display more or less information on different screen sizes, in the same way the Gmail app shows message previews alongside the folders list on wider screens. The Action Bar, Fragments API, and other post-GB UI/UX changes have allowed me a lot of freedom and control over my UI while staying very much inside Google's 'vision' for Android applications. I speak as a developer, not only as a consumer.
I think the issue is more of device dimensions rather than UI/UX implementation. For example, I do have issues comfortably using Action Bar elements on the Note 2, while I have no issues on the Droid DNA. This is because ? although both are technically five-inch 'phablets' ? the DNA is not as wide as the Note 2. This is echoed in
AC's review of the DNA:
There seems to have been some confusion over how to classify the Droid DNA. Folks hear "5-inch display" and think "Samsung Galaxy Note 2." And that's just not the case. The DNA is shorter and more narrow than the Note, and it's that difference in width that keeps it firmly planted in the traditional smartphone category, though it definitely is a tall phone.
Emphasis added. I think that software ease-of-use is something the manufacturers need to address in their hardware just as much as Google needs to do with their UX principles.