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
I disagree - long-press isn't intuitive or discoverable, and it's slow. You could make a case that they're a good fit for mobile, but they're truly horrible on desktop.
Hard buttons beat soft buttons for UX any time. You can use them with a glove, you can feel where the are located and you don't accidentally click because your finger was close enough for the capacitive touch sensor to trigger.