Gadgetory

hello again ladies and gentlemen I'm Joe handy the Android authority app guy and welcome back to a very special edition of Google Play weekly Android KitKat 4.4 was released yesterday so take a guess what we're going to talk about this week without further delay let's get started the first thing we'll talk about today is projects felt projects felt is essentially Google's project to optimize Android to work on older hardware by streamlining every major component google has reduced memory used to allow the OS to run on Hardware with as little as 512 megabytes of memory this combined with project butter shows that Google wants a quick and responsive interface even on older hardware some have even begun circulating the speculation that Google is using this as a means to end fragmentation since pretty much all but the oldest Android devices have at least 512 megabytes of memory that covers pretty much everyone it's also been reported that KitKat can work on wearable gadgets like smartwatches and Google glass Android KitKat will have even better performance in multitasking abilities than jellybean they have upgraded their surface flinger from OpenGL ES 1.0 to 2.0 which will improve performance color calibration and according to reports support for more advanced special effects this includes new transitions for app developers to make their apps look even more buttery with the aforementioned memory optimizations this also translates to better multitasking along with the under the hood changes google has also tweaked the UI new transparent effects called immersive mode allow app devs to cover up things like soft keys and the status bar by making them translucent they should solve a lot of problems with the soft keys and status bar taking up precious real estate also much of the Tron blue has been removed in favor of the off-white that we've seen in the leaks with transparent UI leaks this makes Android look a whole lot brighter and that can be an improvement for a lot of people ok now that we have the big stuff out of the way let's take a look at some of the more individual features hang type there are a bunch of them like the Moto X Google now will always be listening just say ok Google to open the app and search for what you need you will not be able to do this with the screen off like the Moto X but once the screen is on it should work just fine you can also access Google now by swiping to the right from the main home screen they have added smarter calling which is actually quite nice with this KitKat will prioritize your favorite contacts and lets you search for nearby establishments so you can call them the caller ID has also been improved and the dialer will now try to get Google Maps info on numbers that call you that aren't in your contacts list one of the bests new features of KitKat will be improved NFC payments days of requiring a secure element to make NFC payments are coming to an end and people will be able to use the tap to pay feature in Google Wallet regardless of the carrier this is done using host card emulation that effectively bypasses that obnoxious secure element requirement good by Isis you had a good run just kidding improved printing is coming to Android 4.4 the premise for this one is simple you can use your handset to print from any printer that it can gain access to according to Google it'll be any printer connected to Google Cloud Print HPE printers and pretty much any other printer that has an Android app imagine being able to sign in to your cloud storage and accessing all the files from one interface guess what KitKat says yes you can with KitKat you'll be able to access cloud storage right along with your internal storage whenever you need to so you don't need to open up various apps just to get to the files you need KitKat will also come with the power to control your television specifically built in support for infrared sensors will be included so now any OEM that wants to include an infrared sensor can and it will work also Wi-Fi tunnel the direct link setup will allow KitKat to stream media to devices that are on the same Wi-Fi network KitKat also brings a lot of audio and video improvements they include Wi-Fi certified miracast support resolution switching and apps support for common encryption audio tunneling to DSP to conserve battery when the screen is off audio monitoring a loudness enhancer for spoken content system-wide closed captioning and enhanced music and movie controls on the lockscreen some new built-in functionality includes a built-in screen recorder so you can record video of what's happening on your screen also built-in is a new step detector and step counter for you fitness buffs out there these are pretty much self-explanatory included now our new Bluetooth profiles that will add support for a number of new features including setting absolute volume on the system from a Bluetooth device improved keyboard joystick and mouse support and message exchanges with nearby devices the last two things we'll talk about our security features and location features app sandbox security has been improved using security enhanced linux and they've also included two new cryptographic algorithms for location features the quick settings now have two options for high accuracy mode and battery saving mode that will adjust your system settings accordingly all in all despite only going from 4.3 to 4.4 kitkat is a gigantic step forward from jelly bean and after a couple of years of incremental updates it's great to see Google finally taking that big next step forward once again i'm joe handy the android authority app guy feel free to subscribe to our youtube channel and if you like this video check out some of our other ones you can find the written companion for this video in the video description along with the social media links thanks for watching and have a wonderful day