The Android docs describe splitActionBarWhenNarrow like this:
"Add a bar at the bottom of the screen to display action items in the ActionBar, when constrained for horizontal space (such as when in portrait mode on a handset)."
But how is "constrained for horizontal space" defined? There seems to be no way to define when this split occurs.
I'm using ActionBarSherlock and the action bar is split when the screen width is below 480dp.
This behaviour is defined by the two following resource files :
res/values-w480dp/abs_bools.xml
<resources>
<bool name="abs__action_bar_embed_tabs">true</bool>
<bool name="abs__split_action_bar_is_narrow">false</bool>
</resources>
res/values/abs_bools.xml
<resources>
<bool name="abs__action_bar_embed_tabs">false</bool>
<bool name="abs__split_action_bar_is_narrow">true</bool>
</resources>
I have not checked if this is the same behaviour as in ICS code but I'm pretty sure it is.