One of the thing Flip did right was device-video orientation. Even though the device was held vertically which fit naturally in a hand, the video was recorded horizontally. The original iPhone may have done a disservice to the world by matching the orientation of the camera to the screen.
I have a feeling that someday many of our old pictures and videos archived to google photos or hard drives will be consumed on large widescreen devices. When that time comes I think we will all regret the vertical videos of today and wonder what the heck we were thinking. I imagine Apple could add a setting to the iPhone easily enough to never take portrait mode video.
The iPhone has a screen that takes up most of its face. By aligning the camera and screen, they allow you to use the full screen. Can you imagine how annoying it would be to only be able to use ~30% of your screen to shoot video?
Sure, it means the video doesn't align with most computer monitors. But a ton of phone-generated content is being consumed on other phones in its native vertical layout (e.g. on Snapchat). And sometimes vertical layout fits the subject better anyway; we're just not used to seeing it for video because video formats have been stuck at 4:3 or 16:9 for the entire history of consumer video. Photographers have used portrait aspect ratios for over a century.
