Android Developers are being reminded by Google to shift their attention away from the Menu button and focus instead on the Action Bar.

The Menu button function is commonplace in pre-3.0 versions of Google’s Android operating system. It allows users to view options for a particular application by pressing the Menu button on their device.

With the introduction of Honeycomb (version 3.0) and now Ice Cream Sandwich (version 4.0) the function has become redundant as these operating systems remove the need for physical buttons.

All change please

This year we expect to see a new wave of devices running Ice Cream Sandwich, so developers need to make sure they update their apps to use the Action Bar.

Developers need to follow the new Android user experience as many Android devices are expected in 2012 to feature button free designs.

Apps will continue to work on the new software, with Google building an action overflow button which acts as the menu button.

The action overflow button will display on all applications which have not been updated to Android 3.0+, even if they do not require it.

Are you all for button free devices, or will you be pining for your menu, home and back buttons?

We might all be flailing wildly at our laptops to open documents soon as at least two prototype Asus laptops exist that incorporate Microsoft Kinect sensors.

The Daily was lucky enough to snag some time with what a Microsoft insider confirmed were two official Microsoft prototypes running Windows 8.

The gesture control sensors sit where the webcam would normally be (in the centre of the panel above the screen), with what looked to The Daily like LEDs beneath the display.

The Daily Flail

Unfortunately the Murdoch-owned iPad newspaper didn’t manage to grab any pictures nor use the gesture control, but it does seem to confirm that we’ll see Kinect functionality baked into portable hardware at some point in the near future.

Kinect is already compatible with Windows, with the necessary hardware being released in February 2012 after developers were given access to the SDK late last year.

The motion-sensing peripherals have been a massive success for Microsoft on the Xbox 360, bagging well over 10 million sales and a T3 Gadget of the Year award to boot.

BANGCRASHCREAK *coughcough* We’re free! 7 days in Mobile, TechRadar’s alternative and mostly fictitious look at the week’s events, has freed itself from its prison under the disused BenQ Siemens HQ and has returned to find the world is a wholly different place.

We won’t tell you how we came to be entombed in a coffin made entirely of Windows Mobile handsets – but let’s just say a certain unicorn was pretty unhappy with certain people ‘censoring his words on the beautiful BlackBerry Storm’.

When we last spoke, the Palm Pre was still a device that caused us to quiver with excitement, Nokia was still chucking out a new phone every day and Vodafone was happily chatting about DRM-free music. How things have changed eh?

So – we’ve had a quick look over the last week and we were shocked… no, flabbergasted by what we saw. OK, we weren’t that amazed, but it was enough for us to work out that perhaps some of the stories could be better served by extreme embellishment.

Oh nO2!

O2 though the worst was over when it finally apologised to the UK for accidentally leaking mobile phone numbers to any website that requested then while a user was browsing the net on their handset.

But it appears that the company has also leaked Jeff McNultyParson’s unfinished novel, where he describes his experiences as a fast food delivery man in a high class area of Hertfordshire.

Called ‘Where’s the beef?‘ the novel was meant to be an exploratory and defaming look at the way food couriers are treated by those with so much money they sometimes wake up laughing.

But when Jeff began receiving angry emails from horse fanciers the world over, Jeff has decided to scrap the project and will instead be suing O2 for ‘the billions of pounds he would have made had the book been kept secret’.

“I mean, it’s so obvious,” Jeff told TechRadar exclusively. “One minute I’m browsing an erotic horse-jumping website on my Palm Pre, and the next thing I know, my novel is all over the internet. It can’t be a coincidence.”

O2 has responded curtly to the news, saying simply “We have no idea that such a book exists. Although we did all go home on Thursday and leave the doors unlocked with wild geese running around. Sorry about that.”

Apple-powered RIM

We all know that Apple has more money than has ever existed, so it’s no surprise to find out that the firm has actually installed a robot it created at the head of RIM.

Thorsten Heins was described as a ‘little known company insider’ before being promoted to lead the new firm, but TechRadar has been sent blueprints proving he’s actually a cyborg created from the composite parts of ex-CEOs Mike Lazaridis and Jim Balsillie.

Uncovered: This robot has been heading up Nokia’s design studio for 12 years thanks to Samsung

Several sources believe that the action is being taken ensure that RIM never manages to release its next-gen phones and instead keeps releasing the same phone with a different name for the next three years, insisting that “This one, NO, REALLY, this one is going to be a winner for us.”

To the past-mobile!

You’re probably bored of all the touchscreen smartphones on the market at the moment – but imagine if we still had rotary dials instead – playing Angry Birds would be a nightmare.

Well, here’s the past looking at the future (which we call today or yesterday, depending on when you read this) on Tomorrow’s World in 1979… including one of the world’s first wrong numbers on a mobile phone.

YouTube : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vix6TMnj9vY

Motorola has seen an $80 million (£51 million) loss in the fourth quarter of 2011, with the blame placed squarely at the feet of poor device sales.

In the final quarter of 2011, Motorola only managed to shift 10.5 million mobile devices, of which 5.3 million were smartphones.

Coupled with the poor performance of its Xoom tablets, which only shifted 200,000 units in Q4 and 1 million for the year, it has left Motorola with a big hole in its bank balance.

This poor performance in the final 3 months of last year has seen Motorola post a yearly loss of $249 million (£158 million), a dramatic change from 2010 where is made a loss of $86 million (£54 million).

I need a hero…

Motorola’s plan for 2012 is to produce ‘hero’ devices, much like HTC, where it will focus on launching fewer handsets instead of saturating the market continuously with new devices with varying success rates.

Motorola Mobility is still waiting on the takeover by Google to go through, expected to close early this year. Google still requires clearance from several countries on the deal, including the US, China and Canada.

The hope is Google will be able to recover Motorola’s stake in the mobile phone and tablet computer markets, but with Google’s main reason for the purchase being to get hold of the numerous patents which Motorola Mobility holds, will its devices be cast aside?

Samsung has announced its latest batch of financials and it is good news all round for the company, with the Korean giant managing to reap in circa £2.9 billion in profit.

Proving how much of player it now is in the smartphone game, Samsung revealed that half of its profits came from its telecoms division, with the company’s smartphones and tablets mustering 2.64 trillion won (£1.4 billion) from October to December.

This was down to its sprawling Galaxy line-up which also contains the Galaxy Note – a handset Samsung is hoping will usher in a new category of the mobile market.

“We are actually generating new demand in the Note category,” explained Younghee Lee, a vice president in the company’s mobile division during the earnings call.

“That will be continued based on our hardware competitiveness with the addition of brand and user experience.”

TV watching

In all, Samsung’s profit was up 17 per cent for the year and its revenue rose 13 per cent.

When it comes to TVs, Samsung sold 206 million units which is a little lower than the 211 million predicted but it did manage to bring this side of the business into profit.

In 2011 the display division managed to make an operating profit of 570 billion won (£323 million), which is up from the 2000 billion won lost last year, said to be due to the influx of smart and 3D televisions.

At CES 2012, Samsung announced the arrival of big-screen OLED TVs and said that it would be bringing voice and gesture control to its television line-up this year.

As for the Samsung Galaxy S3 – it looks likely that we won’t see this phone for a while as it looks likely to be a no-show at MWC 2012.