Gadgetory

last week Google introduced us to android 4.4 kitkat and the new Nexus 5 now it's interesting about both of these things is neither one blows the doors off of anything design-wise they're both relatively conservative the design of the phone is pretty simple and feature updates they included in KitKat are kind of minor when you look at it but for Google that's actually not a problem they really think that they nailed the core structure of Android with Ice Cream Sandwich and ever since then it's been about refinement since we first introduced this Android style with Ice Cream Sandwich right we were really confident that we were on to something that we had a center to our design language that was built for the future is systems not mature install evel's what we call our hardware abstraction layer is maturing so that means that what each subsequent version of Android we don't have to read redesign or reengineering you know core parts of it and so that makes it easier and faster for for device manufacturers to bring up their next devices KitKat is really about three things the first is its ability to run on low-end hardware that's important but it doesn't really apply to the Nexus 5 but does apply to the Nexus 5 are all the refinements of Polish that they've added to the UI the consistency in the status bar so all the icons are now the same color you know nobody's gonna notice that but oh I'm gonna be very happy the expanded range of Roboto that we have now just giving us a little bit more typographic freedom in the home screen we may be icons bigger you know nobody's gonna notice that's great I love it this is why I love talking to you guys also notice that you guys got rid of the little weird tabs in the app drawer so what was what was the thinking that you wanted a simple simplify oh yeah again we just want to make it if you're gonna add something from the app drawer just make that after our experience all about apps the translucency that's the mute kick on and that's an opt-in feature so you can decide if it makes sense for your app to be translucent or not so something like a launcher it wallpaper makes a lot of sense or the lock screen with album art makes a lot of sense we have new modes as well one of the we have - what we call a full-screen immersed the idea is that the system URI literally folds back out of the way now we have that before the difference now is that what the mode is it can latch into that mode because you know you you about fruit ninja the classic problem is you're swiping in the accident or faults now we can have that UI go away and stay away until you actually do an explicit swipe up together most importantly KitKat shows that Google is able to take all the different pieces of its company and start building it into Android having the Google now cards to the swipe away being able to say okay Google don't actually do something but have it do something you know just just by hitting the home button you know any time that you're there as soon as you unlock that device I think that's great and you look at dealers on smartphones if I was to be getting smarter but the dialer have traditionally kind of been stuck in that feature phone world I had one of those paper takeout menus you remember those was actually printed you know and I so I punched in the number like dialed in the number and actually figured my phone figured out that I was calling a piece of Chicago and I guess I already knew that I was calling pizzas Chicago at that part okay fine but what was cool was it was in my call log at Pizza Chicago now not as a random number not the random side numbers so then when they called me later to say hey you're delivery guys on their way I knew who it was rather than saying okay I have no idea what this number is I'm sure everyone had that experience it really starts turning the types of things that you do to be less about you predicting what you're going to need and downloading the app ahead of time and putting it in the right place and instead switching to the model that drip kind of we all use on the web where Google is gonna help you find what you need when you need it and actually some of the time help you find it before you know you need it instead of Google Apps just being a thing that you run on Android Android is becoming Google you