Gadgetory

android 4.4 kitkat has been officially released but unless you've already got a nexus 5 in hand you probably don't have it luckily there are some builds out there that you can put on your own device like we did with our Nexus 4 to get the Android KitKat experience there I'm Joe Levi for Pocket now let's go hands-on with KitKat on the Nexus 4 this is my Nexus 4 and I'm running an AO SP version of Android 4.4 it is running a kernel version at 3 point 4.0 not some of the rumors that we're going to make a big jump up in that and you can see kind of what we've got down here this is not the official ROM there are going to be some some hiccups and some things that aren't going to be there when the official rom comes out for this let's go ahead and get started first of all we tap on the Android version we get a nice big K we press and hold and we get Android there's also a kind of fun little thing that we can get to sometimes I can get to it sometimes I can't long press there see if we can long press again and now here's our little immersive game with all the versions of Android that you can just tap why not the first time you run this it tells you to get out of this mode you want to swipe down from the top and that will bring up your your buttons animated up from the bottom I think that's kind of a hint at the immersive mode that is supposed to be coming in Android 4.4 let's go back into settings first of all settings themselves here's our notification shade and our quick toggles so pretty much what we're used to location has a new icon which ironically looks exactly like it should be it's no longer a GPS satellite or an x marks the spot or a target it's now and I am here location pin finally that makes sense and it works settings is now a cog looks a little bit different than it did before up here you can see that as well it kind of carries through everything is pretty much the same there are of course some changes in here go into more you can see just a little bit of stuff down here new mobile plan is listed t-mobile doesn't have any provisioning website for it so it's not going to show you anything there unfortunately so we'll just go right past that Bluetooth it looks almost identical we come on down here we now have a home which we can quickly and easily choose our launcher and even get rid of one this is just the stock launcher that comes with AOSP coming on down here we have a tap and pay this has a link that says learn more mine doesn't do anything if yours does post it down in the comment let us know what it does for you there theoretically this would integrate with Google Wallet I've installed Google Wallet but there's no cross integration at least not on this ROM location we've shown you this in the past we have a mode up here and that's really all you need to worry about is that mode you can come into high accuracy battery saving or device only kind of interesting the way that they've decided to use that and I don't know why a high accuracy should be everything or device only and then you should have battery saving as two options so it kind of is interesting that they've separated them out that way but they have then you've got recent requests for your location so you can see what apps are trying to find out where you are location services right now Google location reporting is on and Google search and Google Play services have both used the low battery version of finding out where I am so it's just kind of a rough location but I can see what apps are finding out where I am right here quickly easily and if there's anything suspicious in there I can take action on it you can also quickly turn it off if you want to coming back in here just continue heading down same accounts section that we are already used to pretty much the same thing that you are used to seeing there of course as you add new services you'll get new items in here like Dropbox and whatnot we now have printing which does that I'm sure it's supposed to do more than that but right now just as that that tells me that I need to go to the Play Store I need to download an app Google Cloud Print or something or somebody else's cloud printing service and then theoretically that's going to show up here in this list and I'll be able to select defaults and make changes and I don't know we'll have to see how that turns out but that's where you get and then of course we've already shown you about phone so that's the nuts and bolts back in there show you that and just you know regular stuff that we're already used to nothing big there before I jump into the home let's go into the app drawer first of all you'll notice there is no more apps and widgets that's gone you also now have no little icon up here to jump quickly and easily to the Play Store that's interesting because I got really used to that and it was right there now I have to go and find it alphabetically in the list but that's what they've done you can see I've just installed a very slim set of my favorite apps this is still rooted so I bear that in mind when you're watching everything that goes through here I haven't done anything special with with supersu you know a completely empty list so but it's they're coming back in here you'll notice now that still has kind of the animation icon or the animation to it the zoom in zoom out and that's pretty much it very basic very simple we've got five icons across and five icons down easy-cheesy okay good now the fun part you want to add something to the home screen and it's an app you can do that easily let's go ahead and put maps same way that you're used to just like that if you want to do that to another page you can do that just like that now if you notice down here on my little dots and not my messages my little dots to indicate what page I'm on I have four home screens this one that one my main one and then Google+ yes it's now Google+ downside to doing Google+ this way is if you want to dismiss these cards that way you can't because it takes you back to your home screen you now have to do it the other way to dismiss it which is okay I just kind of got used to flinging back and forth and if I do that now it's not gonna let me do it oh well it's the cost of progress you can still get into it by pulling up from the bottom it just does the animation off to the side as well so kind of interesting that they did that back to our little icons down here let's say I don't want to have four screens I just want to have three I move that back there and now you notice I now only have three there's nothing off to the side anymore so it automatically adds those does that go on forever I don't know yet I've only done a maximum before and if you want to play with it and let us know how many you have feel free let us know down in the comments next how do we change wallpaper and get widgets to tap and hold just like that and now you can thumb through here kind of honeycomb like remember when we could do this in honeycomb when we have this kind of dock or this tray down at the bottom well now we can do the same thing here with KitKat we can go into wallpapers and for some reason that didn't do anything for me wallpapers will launch the wallpaper picker and everything is in here all of your wallpapers including your live wallpaper all in one big long list so you don't have to know the difference between them they're all just wallpapers you set it and there you go just quick easy simple just like that next up in there we've got widgets tap on that here your widgets you can you know quickly and easily grab one just like you'd used to tap it drag it wherever you want you still have the widgets that scoot out of the way the icons scoot out of the way to make room for it really quick really easy a simple way to do it last but not least is we have settings so you can get settings all about in this case Google now and just kind of basic stuff that you can do with your launcher right here another fun thing is and I've used this long enough that I no longer have this little animation up in here that tells you stuff to say I'm not going to say it right now because then it'll do stuff little animation that pops out and says save this keyword and it does stuff so we can and it's listening at least we thought it was only going to be the Nexus 5 that was listening this is a nexus 4 and okay google what's the weather goingto be like today just as easy as that you can see I've got an always-on at least when I'm on one of my home screens listener okay Google how tall is the Empire State Building just as easy as that again coming back and I know I can continue searching from that screen I'm just trying to show you here I'm not touching the phone just saying okay Google call Texas Roadhouse steakhouse so quickly and easily from my home screen I can very very conveniently get to all kinds of stuff and use the power that is in Google now without leaving that home screen in fact without even touching the home screen very convenient I like it and I've already impressed my friends with it so there you go so that's been a first look at KitKat on the Nexus 4 it is by no means official code there is lots and lots of rough edges that you're going to run into I'm getting a calendar err about every five minutes that having been said the overall experience is very nice it's smooth its fluid I like it and I like the subtle yet profound changes that are there but I'm curious to know what you think head down to the comments let us know what you thought of the video and if you've already flashed this on your phone let us know what you thought of it there as well if you want to follow us on social media we are there and we would love to see you there and carry the conversation there as well we're on Facebook we're on Google+ we're on Instagram we're even at pocket now on Twitter I'm on Twitter too I'm at Joe Levi for Pocket now showing off KitKat I'll see you next time