I personally was completely fine with the 6.5 mixer. I don’t (yet) see the point of a resizing mixer to the degree steinberg is trying to design it. The two sizes of the previous strips was completely perfect.
That is their main issue from a logical and design POV. A channel strip without a minimum with and maximum with should not even be considered. (In my humble opinion). It’s been tried before and failed.
I do hope they will get a professional interface designer on board soon because Cubase starts to look like something my 2 year old has designed.