It's a curious little spectacle of
the human psychology whenever a situation such as this arises.
Namely, the hottest OS of the day, Android 4.4 KitKat, has been
officially outed, yet there's this vacuum between your expectations
and what reality will inevitably bring in just a few short days. Of
course, your curiosity (or impatience, but we'll leave this kind of
unstoppabe-force-meets-immovable-object type conundrums for the ages
to decide) could as well be altogether deaf and
blind, for you want to
experience the newest Android right here and right now. Luckily,
you're at just the right place.
As some of you
will undoubtedly know, the source code for Android 4.4 KitKat has
been officially released by Google, and a few ports from dev teams,
like ParanoidAndroid, have made it possible for existing devices like
the Nexus 4 to catch a peek. This is precisely what we'll be doing,
waiting can go to hell.
Before you dive
right in, a necessary disclaimer is in order. Bear in mind that this
is an unofficial build, and some features are not currently
working. It's nevertheless quite stable and as stock of an experience as you can get.
Goodbye, Holo theme!
We've
drilled this one into your heads for sure, but it's worth pointing
out yet again that the current Jelly Bean-esque Holo theme is gone.
Android 4.4 KitKat takes onto a dark/white gray contrasting one, and
we actually ended up liking it, despite it feeling a bit lifeless.
Considering the industry we're in, we've pretty much come to accept
change as a fact of life, but it's always nice when things work out
in the end.
While
still on the topic of the theme, it's worth pointing out that Google
has done a splendid job of integrating the new color scheme – it
flows through the near entirety of Android 4.4 KitKat. One exception
is perhaps the dialer, which still looks nearly unchanged, except in
terms of its design, of course.
KISS with a twist: Google is keeping it stupid simple
Moving
on, it's probably fair to say that with the amount of publicity the
Nexus 5 has received, most of you are already aware that it'll come
equipped with a voice-activated Google Now. Lucky for us, our build
of KitKat actually has that feature baked in, so we could access
Google's assistant by simply saying “OK, Google”. It works very
well, though you need to be in view of the Google search
bar on your homescreen. Google Now has definitely taken the
spotlights with the new Android, and it's actually now available as
the leftmost homescreen. This brings the number of ways to get to Google Now to
a whopping three – voice activation, swiping to it on the
homescreen, and the good ol' swipe-up-from-the-bezel style we've
gotten comfortable with.
A feature here and a feature there
Android
4.4 KitKat wasn't really supposed to turn out this way. There was a
not too-distant time when we all thought the next Android would be a
milestone version, or 5.0 KeyLimePie, to be exact. This didn't
exactly pan out, so we're happy to see some new exciting stuff making its way through nevertheless.
Scrolling
further down the menu, we've got the new Location and Printing menus.
As far as the former is concerned, there's no new functionality, it's
just more organized, intuitive and informative. Printing, on the
other hand, is an altogether new feature, though we
didn't manage to get it to detect any printer at the office
whatsoever. Early builds are like that. Printing nevertheless appears to be well integrated into
the core Android functionality, and you'll be able to quickly print a
photo or a document by accessing the triple dot menu that you've come
to recognize.
A
pretty important new feature that Android 4.4 KitKat brings to the
table is native screenrecording. A reviewers dream, the new
functionality is unfortunately not yet covered via an app, so you do
have to work some command prompt magic (easy) for the time being. It
basically allows you capture a real time video of
what's going on your screen at an acceptable resolution, and without
any lag or stutter.
The new apps
The
list of apps that have received some fine-tuning includes several.
The Downloads app, for example, can now sort your downloaded content,
and now has a grid or a list view option. Hangouts has also received a hefty update,
and can now be made your default SMS app. The Clock, too, has been
refreshed, and is now ever so slightly more intuitive. Another
interesting observation is that Google Earth appears to now be part
of the baseline app cache for Android, meaning that you can get the
so-called Flyover view of the world through Maps easily, in case you
want a more dimensional understanding of a particular area. Last, but
not least, the Dialer has also undergone some visual and design
changes and now has a persistent search bar to help you sift through
your contacts. A nice extra: you can voice search, without having to
resort to the Voice Dialer (which, oddly enough, is still present in
our build).
Closing words
Android
4.4 KitKat actually surprised us. Truth is, while there's nothing
truly groundbreaking about it (well, perhaps with the exception of
screenrecording), it certainly infuses valuable functionality into
the core of Android. It's slightly more intuitive, slightly more
neatly organized, and more powerful than ever before.
There's one other,
potentially groundbreaking thing about Android 4.4 KitKat, and that's
the promise of memory optimization to the extent of even devices with
512MB RAM running KitKat fluidly. If this pans out, it could be huge for
the platform as a whole, and we can't wait to test it out.
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