Option 2, without a question. The increased real estate in the menu would be a huge improvement in landscape mode, which on my device is currently restricted to a mere 3 lines of text. This makes scrolling through the notebook and tags list very difficult. In addition to only seeing 3 lines, the area to perform the swipe action in is simply too tiny. When a sync or decrypt operation is in progress this ‘window’ gets reduced to just 2 or even 1 line, and in extreme cases completely vanishes. I can only get this space back by performing another sync straight after as this clears the results of the previous operation. A genuine UX issue stemming from a UI flaw.
I appreciate this is not the place to complain about the current UI. I merely mention it to highlight the fact that Option 1 would not remedy this problem. If a UI refresh is indeed on the cards, now is a good time to take alternative modes into consideration too. Not all users are portrait users, whether they use a niche device like my Planet Computers Gemini and Cosmo, or an ordinary phone in landscape mode + Bluetooth keyboard (like I used to do before getting the Gemini). I come from a Psion 5/5MX background, and using portrait mode does not come natural to me for certain tasks.
Option 1 is little more than a visual refresh of the current design, with TAGS, CONFIGURATION, and SYNCHRONIZE taking up far too much room. I’d much rather have that extra space available for the notebook and/or tags list, even in portrait mode.
To be completely honest though, I prefer the design ideas proposed by @giteshsharma . I’ve posted screenshots of my landscape UI issues in his thread, but I can repost them here if desired.
Also, why not add New Notebook to the + button?