Google’s latest version of Android, KitKat 4.4 brings with it quite a few new additions, and from what we’ve seen it’s the best looking Android version yet. The change in KitKat is not nearly as drastic as the change Apple brought with iOS 7, but there’s enough changes that does make it look, feel and perform better.
Some of the key the new Android 4.4 KitKat features include:
Design Changes
There’s a handful of design tweaks to the OS, which make Android cleaner and simpler than ever before. The status and notification bar are now translucent, and they disappear completely when you’re in a full-screen app. There’s less chrome across the entire OS, and more space open space display for whatever you’re doing. There’s a new launcher, a new condensed version of Google’s Roboto font, a better looking dialer and a generally lighter and cleaner look to Android.
More Integration
Google’s essentially built the Yellow Pages into its dialer app, allowing you to search for a business or person and dial their number without ever having to figure it out.
Google Hangouts is far more integrated into the operating system than ever before. Where there was once a Messages icon, there is now only Hangouts. The app was updated to integrate SMS, and work better for voice calling, and it’s now part of the way you’ll talk to other people on Android. Texting, instant messaging, even voice and video calling, are all now done through Hangouts – it’s like a combination of FaceTime and iMessage into a single application. If you don’t want to use Hangouts, of course, you can select your own default texting app in KitKat
Performance
There’s a lot of imprevements under the hood, tweaked and optimized to work on lower-end, lower-memory devices. KitKat appears to be a big step toward Google solving its fragmentation problem, by building an OS that works well on a huge range of devices old and new. Chrome uses 16 percent less memory than in Jelly Bean, says Pichai, requiring just 512MB of RAM. All of Google’s apps have been optimized to use less memory.
Screenshots:
These are just some of the key new features, read about all the new features here.
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