[kaufman]

That makes complete sense. Perhaps the best solution is to just simplify a lot. Pick 2 or three layouts new and then let users select which ones they want. For example:

Standard view
Standard + Tags
Standard + Publisher+Pub date
Standard + Tags+ Publisher + Pub date

You can even add a note at the bottom that you are limiting it to this for now because of device limitations. Then in a couple of years I will come along and point out to you how much faster devices are and we can revisit this for 4.4.0.

Edit: since this isn't going in for a while, if you do decide to just pick a couple of fixed layouts perhaps you could have a thread where you ask people for suggestions and just pick the top three.