I rarely split views, so that makes no difference to me - all my splitting tends to occur in Emacs.

And I never type anything to connect to my screen sessions. How primitive ;)

I have shortcuts for the main machines I use that opens a terminal window, ssh's to it using my key, and attaches to my running screen or starts a fresh one if none is running (rarely - most of my screen sessions are 1+ years old)

My sessions on less important machines run in screen windows.