I would like to detect if the navigation keys of the front of the phone (Home,Menu,Back,Search) are hard-keys (ex. G1) or soft-keys (ex. Nexus One).
This api /android/content/res/Configuration.html#keyboard gets close but is related to the keyboard and not the front facing keys.
KeyEvent (http://d.android.com/reference/android/view/KeyEvent.html) has a FLAG_VIRTUAL_HARD_KEY flag, I can only detect that after the key is pressed. I'd like to find out what type of buttons the user has without asking the user to press a key first.
I would have expected such an api to be under /android/hardware/package-summary.html but android.hardware has very little info about the actual hardware of the device.
sorry for incomplete links...