I was skimming recent bug reports and noticed this: https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=67340
On an iPad in landscape mode, there's *very* little vertical room between the VE toolbar and the top of the on-screen keyboard -- only about 220px of height -- and the references dropdown menu is too tall and partly disappears behind the keyboard. (Dismissing the keyboard kills focus and hides the menu; scrolling doesn't move the toolbar and menu because they're fixed to the viewport.)
There is however a lot of horizontal space... I notice that text selection menus on mobile/tablet tend to be laid out horizontally: on iOS they're a popup horizontal segmented button bar; on Android you get a context-sensitive action-bar variant at the top of the screen.
Would a horizontally-focused menu design, maybe more like a second toolbar, work better here?
-- brion