From the buttery JellyBean Android has reached to the tasty dark chocolate bar from Nestle – the KitKat. Google along with the Nexus 5 has officially released the Android 4.4 kitKat mobile operating system. Packed with lots of cool features Android 4.4 delivers a smarter and more engaging user experience. With this version Google is trying to reduce the fragmentation its facing with Android, as Android 4.4 will support and work smoothly on devices with less than 512MB of RAM.
Let’s break into what’s new with Android 4.4 KitKat –
- Android for Everyone – If you don’t have the money to go for a high-end Android smartphone don’t worry, you can still experience the latest and greatest of Android 4.4. As Android 4.4 is designed to run fast, smooth, and responsively on a much broader range of devices than ever before — including on millions of entry-level devices around the world that have as little as 512MB RAM. The system core process have improved memory management and reduce memory footprint. They are now more aggressively protect system memory from apps consuming large amounts of RAM, thus everything runs fast and smooth.
- Deeper Google Now integration – We have seen it on Google Moto X smartphone – the “Ok Google”, saying it will launch voice search, send a text, check weather, get directions or even play a song and everything without touching the screen.
- Immersive mode – It automatically hides everything including the status bar and navigation buttons except what the user really want to see. It’s useful while you are reading a book, playing a game, or watching a movie, as with immersive mode their will be – no more status bar, no more navigation bar.
- Faster multitasking – Android 4.4 takes system performance to an all-time high by optimizing memory and improving users touchscreen so that it responds faster and more accurately than ever before.
- New Dialer and smarter caller ID – Your smartphone is still a device to make call, so Google has brought up with many enhancements to the dialer. In Android 4.4 the new phone app automatically prioritizes users contacts based on the people they talk to the most. Along with it whenever user get a call from a phone number not in their contacts, their phone will look for matches from businesses with a local listing on Google Maps.
- Hangouts app – As from the previous update, the Hangouts app now fully integrates SMS and MMS messages, alongside with other conversations and video calls. It also now supports sharing users location and animated GIFs.
- Google Cloud storage and Cloud printing – Now don’t worry about losing your phone data, as with Android 4.4 Google has built a new back solution that will ensure all your apps, its data, setting and everything else will be saved on the Play Store safely. And with Google Cloud printing users will able to push any document, picture, or web page to the printer directly from a phone or tablet.
- Screen recording – Android 4.4 adds support for screen recording and provides a screen recording utility that lets users capture video as you use the device and store it as an MP4 file.
- IR Blasters – Android 4.4 introduces platform support for built-in IR blasters, along with a new API and system service that let users create apps to take advantage them.
- Chromium WebView – Android 4.4 includes a completely new implementation of WebView that’s based on Chromium, that gives the latest in standards support, performance, and compatibility to build and display your web-based content.
In addition to above, there are a host of other more interesting updated on Android 4.4. You can get full details on Android 4.4 KitKat on their website and if you are a developer then go to developers. android.com.