Concerning the lacks of pin on some controllers, the function row could always be folded in the numbers row and made acessible via a function key of some sort.
We could also make it so pressig the two shift buttons simultaneously is how you lock into upper-case letters. (Another double-shift to unlock.) That would let us remove the rightmost colum too. (I only need the upper-case lock from it, and I don’t need it there specifically.)