alt Hacker NewsAndroid used to have a dedicated menu key that would always bring up a menu. It was removed to chase Apple's 100% screen design.
Replies
FreakyT • yesterday at 11:27 PM
IMO, the old Android menu button wasn't great UX. It ended up just being a miscellaneous laundry list of random functions, and the users would just need to learn "spam the menu button randomly on every screen just in case the needed action is hiding in there."
frantathefranta • yesterday at 8:31 PM
Just got nostalgic about the 4 hardware buttons on my Sony Xperia Play: back-home-context(option)-search.
Still the best navigable phone I had when coupled with the Nova Launcher gestures.
dansquizsoft • today at 3:19 AM
And the world has been improved for it ever since. What a waste of screen real-estate these buttons were...
Long-press and the ••• menu in the overflow is a far superior UI paradigm than having a purpose built menu button.
90% of the time, even in Android that was pre-Honeycomb, the menu ended up just showing what would have been in the overflow anyways.
Android really did end up doing a lot better on the UX side that iOS with the contextual action bar and long-press to select. The idea of selection mode on iOS is still a weird process, and it's been mostly worked around since with higher PPI screens and touch sensors, instead doing a small area to "select" items on iOS