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I haven't used Ice Cream Sandwich yet and as far as I know, some phones (Google Nexus perhaps) don't have capacitive or hard buttons. Now as you can see below, there's 4 buttons (this was an image I found while googling).

Android 4.0 navigation bar

As far as I know, the buttons are (starting from the left):

  • Back button
  • Home button
  • ???
  • Menu button

I want to know what the third one is? The one that has overlapping rectangles? My phone has capacitive and I have all the above aside from that one button. I asked this just out of curiosity.

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  • looks like the menu button, don't know about the 3 doted one Commented Jun 30, 2012 at 12:48
  • The third dotted one IS the menu button. Not the rectangle one Commented Jun 30, 2012 at 12:49
  • a little bit of dabbling the google revealed to me that this is, actually, the task manager/recent apps button Commented Jun 30, 2012 at 12:53
  • @svarog oh wow, how did you come across that info? I don't know what search tags to use when searching xD Commented Jun 30, 2012 at 12:57
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    FYI: what you called "physical soft buttons" are called capacitive buttons. Commented Jun 30, 2012 at 15:23

1 Answer 1

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That's the "Recent Apps" button. It's alternative of long-press physical home button.

If you tap this, a scrollable screen appears containing thumbnails of suspended or closed recent apps. You can tap thumbnails to switch to apps or swipe it to discard.

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  • But why separate that? Does holding down the "virtual" home button no longer show the recent apps? (I need to wait 3 more minutes to accept ur answer. :P) Commented Jun 30, 2012 at 12:56
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    @Shedo Ask user experience department of Google. Probably, they want to show off multitasking.. or, they want us to get to multitasking without wasting any moment by long-press. Commented Jun 30, 2012 at 13:01
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    @ShedoSurashu: that is correct, long pressing the home button no longer does anything currently. I think the UI team is discouraging long pressing in the recent versions of Android. Long pressing is horrible from usability point of view since they are not discoverable. Commented Jul 2, 2012 at 14:03

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