Someone's theory from another thread was that the limited screen estate makes it harder to combine all the different options into an omnibar on iOS (top hit, search, bookmarks and history). I concur.
Someone's theory from another thread was that the limited screen estate makes it harder to combine all the different options into an omnibar on iOS (top hit, search, bookmarks and history). I concur.
The two fields present different keyboards when active.
The omni-field would either make you type all your dot.coms or upgrade to keyboards to make tpying addresses easier in another way.
Combining both fields into one is just another way for Google to data mine you. With "search suggestions" enabled, every key stroke in the search box is logged and sent to Google. Well guess what, with a combined bar even URLs that you type manually or ones that you copy/paste get sent, giving Google precise info about which sites you are visiting and when (when combined with a tracking cookie/your Google username)
Since they did this with Mac Safari in the last release I think it comes down to the keyboard. Notice iOS Chrome has that bar with .com etc grafted on the top. Apple would have to do something like that. It's not an obvious solution so that's probably why they didn't do it. Hopefully they figure it out for iOS 7, along with many other things.