On American Android phones with four hardware buttons - we generally have a Menu Key, a Home Key, a Back Key and a Search Key.
The new paradigm per ICS and HTC Ville leak is to have 3 hardware or software buttons, a Back Key, a Home Key, and a Multitask Key. The menu key should be in the new "Action Bar" strip in the program's UI.
When you upgrade a phone with the four old style hardware keys to ICS - the program's don't use an "Action Bar" design. Instead menu key functionality is preserved and to multitask you continue to hold the Home Key.
My question is this - why have the dichotomy in paradigm? Wouldn't it be simpler to force everyone into using an "Action Bar" and then reassigning the Menu Key to function as the new Multitask Key?
As iphone lead a one-key-phone, others aim to this target.
I've wondered that as well. Seeing how useful the multitask button is in the Nexus actually makes me frustrated that I have to hold the home button to bring up the multitask menu.
I guess they just want to preserve it so as not to confuse the pre-existing users.
[Q] Is there a way to make capacitive menu button work as "recent apps" button?
Is there a way to make capacitive menu button work as "recent apps" button? or swap function with holding down home. In ICS, I use 'recent apps' a lot more than menu (and with menu becoming a 3 dot icon in app anyway). Holding down home button for 1 second is i think too slow, and when you use it a lot, those seconds adds up.
Are there any apps that let you assign an app to double pressing home? Or long pressing on the menu button to use search?
I hate that Android has removed the menu button. Is there a way to put it back? What I would really like to do is change the recent screens button to function as the menu button.
I'd not noticed this before but it seems the RN3 left hand button is a recents button on press and a menu button on long press. This prevents the handy split screen feature from working in CM14 and above on this button. I can get this feature to work by adding a "Long press action" to the home button in settings however I would like it to work the same as my other Android devices.
Any thoughts on how this can be changed? I've had a mess in the keyboard layouts (where I also removed the long press on fingerprint to start the camera as it's annoying) but no luck with this.
Thanks.
EDIT: After changing the values again in Settings->Buttons this now seems to be working as it should. Odd.