Have Some KitKat

Another update on the phone front. 

I have highly anticipated the release of Android 4.4 KitKat but to my slight frustration, phones like the Moto X got their OTA before my Nexus 4, which I think was a little unfair. 

But all that aside, its here, and it is beautiful. The changes appear to be subtle but are pretty immense once you're trying to settle into the ecosystem. That calm blue colour highlighting associated with Android since ICS all the way to JellyBean 4.3 is replaced with this super cool, straight out of sci-fi white.

The dialler app is one trippy motherfucker right now and its also got its own TrueCaller like implementation, so it searches for business' numbers if you're calling any.

That being said, my favourite feature, by far of the 4.4 update, is how the lockscreen shows full size album art of whatever is playing..

But the main feature of 4.4 that I have been drooling over since the pre-release photo of the Nexus 5 were the transparent navigation an notification bars.

Although, as I learned today, the swipe left on the homescreen to launch Google Now and the transparent bars are exclusive to the Nexus 5. 

I have a feeling this feature will probably roll out on future iterations and even if thats not true its only going to take Nova Prime a little while to get it. (In case you didn't know, you can sign up for a Nova Launcher Beta, install the .apk file over your existing Nova Launcher to take advantage of the transparent bars feature )

Now you may notice that my screen shot shows transparent notification and navigation bars. What is this sorcery, you might ask.


Well, take your lazy fingers to Google and search for an article that Android Police wrote about how they too were disappointed that the transparency is a Nexus 5 exclusive.
So they did something pretty impressive. They took out the Google Experience Laucher (thats what the stock launcher is called on the N5) and basically installed that apk on any other device running KitKat.

So far, the only compatibility issues are a non-centered Google search bar and I think that happens only on Nexus 7s

Feel free to leave a line, if you need some help

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V

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Now Listening : Retrograde - James Blake
Now Reading : The Design of the UNIX Operating System - Maurice J Bach

Now Feeling : A little annoyed