Hardware menu button not opening in Samsung galaxy tab 3

Question

I have a samsung galaxy tab3 and I have the menu implemented in the usual manner - i.e.

@Override
public boolean onCreateOptionsMenu(Menu menu) {
    MenuInflater inflater = getMenuInflater();
    inflater.inflate(R.menu.game_menu, menu);
    return true;
}

and for menu selected

@Override
public boolean onOptionsItemSelected(MenuItem item) {
    // Handle item selection
    switch (item.getItemId()) {
    case R.id.new_game:
        newGame();
        return true;
    case R.id.help:
        showHelp();
        return true;
    default:
        return super.onOptionsItemSelected(item);
    }
}

In my xml ive used android:showAsAction="never" for items that I want to see in overflow and android:showAsAction="ifRoom" for items I want to see upfront. But in this tablet I see only the ones with ifRoom set and the others just disappear and the menu button does not show the overflow items. I've looked at all answers on SO and tried the popular ones like setting minimum and target sdk versions to less than 11 and so on. But the menu just wont come up. It works fine in devices that dont have the capacitive menu touch and an overflow button is shown in the action bar.

Answer 1

Well it ended up working when I programmatically called openOptionsMenu with onKeyDown

@Override
    public boolean onKeyDown(int keyCode, KeyEvent event) {

         if (keyCode == KeyEvent.KEYCODE_MENU) {
            openOptionsMenu();
        }
        return true;
    };

Answer 2

MAybe you have a theme (like full screen) that does not support an ActionBar?