Gadgetory

we just went hands-on with Google's developer edition of the latest version of Android Android L but how does it stack up against the version of Android that you've got in your pocket I'm Joe Levi with pocket now this is Android L versus Android KitKat this is my Nexus 5 running the latest developer preview version of Android L downloaded just yesterday if you want to find out how you can get this on your device make sure you head over to pocketnow.com we'll have the link down in the description how you can get this under your device this is my nexus 4 it's running the latest version of KitKat version 4.4.4 that's a lot of force so how are they similar how are they different well first of all it's very very similar a lot of the iconography is the same the layout is the same widgets function just the same app drawers function pretty much the same but you'll notice right away we've got different on-screen soft buttons very different some people are calling this up PlayStation look and feel whereas this is the the more traditional version that we've become accustomed to folders on Android KitKat are kind of offset and scrolled back into the distance but once you open them they look and feel just like a folder complete with icons and a tile and a label at the bottom folders over on Android L well if you look they're still stacked but they're kind of stacked all straight in a row not offset and when you open them up you still get kind of the same look and feel the same grid of icons in the same way to go in and edit and change your label we can get our notification bar on the top this is where we get our notifications our Bluetooth in this case I'm set to vibrate mode Wi-Fi I don't have a sim in the phone my battery and the current time looking over at Android L you can see we've got essentially the same thing there's my notification icon Bluetooth has a new icon see if we can get that a little bit closer when you've got a Bluetooth device connected their dots on either side of the Bluetooth icon vibrate looks a little bit different than it did on Android KitKat Wi-Fi it's a similar icon but there's a little bit subtle differences in there my connection here I'm connected to t-mobile's LTE battery looks a little bit different and the clock has that new Roboto font that they just updated for Android L coming back over to KitKat when we pull down the notification shade this is a very dark theme it's the stock theme that comes with every version of AOSP Android but very very dark not a lot of lightness here you can open and dismiss notifications just by swiping you can dismiss them all with the dismiss all button and then you can toggle over here as well and get to your quick toggles and into your settings when we compare that to Android L pull this down it's a little bit lighter we still have the dark across the top we have the time up at the top but no longer the date as we did with Android KitKat a little bit new layout we've got our picture over here rather than just a generic icon saying that this is your personalized stuff and then much more of these these cards which is the material design that we heard so much about at Google i/o from here we can tap on your little avatar or you can pull down again so I'll show you that again here is that and here is that to pull down to our quick notification so a little bit different way to get there it's a double poll rather than a pull on the tap but you can still get there just by tapping settings is available quickly and easily right there by tapping on the COG so let's go into settings here you can see my settings if I want to turn bluetooth on or off I can do that I've got not much of an animation at all on my toggles the toggles are very Square and blocky when they're finally turned on the color changes to let you know what's there you can see a very very light theme much larger easier to read easier to understand still kind of divided into the same categories but overall you know a refresh turning things on and off now has a animated slide button toggle thing I don't know exactly what you'd want to call that but quite a bit different than the square blocky switch that we had before in kitkat when you get to the top of a list you get this nice subtle little glow at the top it doesn't look like it's a solid block it looks like more of a gradient the same on the bottom also when you tap things light up just momentarily and it's the whole bar that lights up see what that looks like on Android L since this is a light theme having a light wouldn't make sense so they instead have this shadow it doesn't look like there's any gradient we're sure that that was done just because it takes less processor especially GPU to render a solid color with an animation than it does to render a gradient with an animation once we tap on something you'll see the new ripple effect and animations that they were talking about that happened really fast but if you can see where I tap kind of ripples and spreads out so if I tap on the side it recognized where that is and it spreads out if i tap on that side it spreads out from there again very fast it's a subtle thing but it's it's interesting then the less it also looks like the first time you tap on something it goes a little bit slower and the next time you tap on something it goes a little bit faster this is using the the brand new Android runtime or art by default and you can't change that back based on what we can tell Android KitKat comes with both but it comes with dalvik set as the default next up is the new recents menu tapping on that you get your list you can dismiss things out of it closing them and whatnot but it's just a simple list that you can scroll up and down in when we switch over to Android L we get the new material or card-based interface so we'll tap on recents and you can see here a card stack that's much more fluid much more animated but it lets you do the same thing you can swipe things off to the side quickly easily just like that the new boot animations over on Android L has the the same Google colors but a very different version than what they have on Android KitKat they both boot in approximately the same time a little bit more animation a little bit there here's our lockscreen similar information unlike android kitkat which lets me quick launch my camera just by swiping I can do that over here as well but I can also do the same thing with my dialer down here in the bottom I can just swipe right for my phone and then I have a dialer right there in this case to make an emergency call you'll also notice that I have notifications that look a lot nicer on the screen since I have a screen lock in place it doesn't show me the contents of what of what I'm seeing in those notifications I can come and swipe up nice animation there that builds in and then I have the nice ripple effect to login of course that's not the pin that I have but hides your information this is a little bit frustrating because it's not as convenient as otherwise but hopefully once we have Android wear we won't need to do that pin unlock because the phone itself will be unlocked by the the wearable on your wrist there are some of the major differences and similarities between Android L and Android KitKat if you liked the video please give it a thumbs up and make sure you subscribe to our channel so you don't miss out on any of our future coverage also we're on all your favorite social media networks we would love to interact with you over there for PocketNow showing off Android L versus Android KitKat I'm Joe Levi we'll catch you next time