As you are all hearing, nearly all upcoming hot devices will have bigger screens especially those devices that will run tbe next version of Android. Ice cream sandwich that is.
I think that the extra inches (1-3) will replace the current capacitive buttons, and they will show controls similar to the ones on Honeycomb.
This is my opinion, and I think this will solve a problem that was found when you switch between devices running Android,where the buttons displacement differs.
Again, this only a speculation and we have to wait and see.