HTC Droid Eris :: Texting Character Count

I've only seen this mentioned once or twice but one thing that annoys me with the update is the character number that's displayed when typing a text. Why did they have to put a black box counter right in the messaging window when typing in portrait mode? After creating a message, that box covers part of the last word in the first line. And when flipping it to landscape the character box disappears!!?! I shouldn't have to turn the phone to read back what I just typed.The concept of displaying the amount of characters left is a welcome feature but the execution is really poor. I would think it would be obvious to place it in another area outside of the field that you're actually interacting with.