Re: The large empty space area around is supposed to make them easy to tap - even for people with fat fingers!
Nope.
The size of the tap area does not have to match the visual size of the checkboxes.
It never did, even before, with the checkmarks -- the code always used a separate "value" to check "is the user trying to tap the checkbox", not its visual size, and it still does now.
It's nice that the sizes aren't _too_ different (a big diff might be confusing), but it's not a problem that they aren't exactly the same. People tap "somewhere over there" and not "on that pixel exactly".
What is really is:
The larger white space on the left (and this applies to contact images too) is necessary for the "thread counter", which since 1.8 is positioned on the very left, in that very same white space area that we're talking about.
The thread counter may have up to 2 digits (we cap it at 99, but "10" or "27" are entirely possible).
And then there is same exact amount of white space on the right side of the checkbox / contact image, a different amount would look ugly. Right?