I had a kind of the same issue here but I am not using the official 7" screen either.
I tried to resize the screen initially but for some reason I can't explain, it would not take. I finally tried resizing the screen while I was using it through vnc. The normal screen was off at the time. It took and held.
Using the pre-hampi distro.
Hope this helps some.
James W8ISS
P.S. = I do see the <....>/zzzzz and a callsign once in awhile. Had no issues though.