As time goes on we all love to see the newer firmware and Rom’s come out, but there’s generally a catch. The older a device gets, the less ability is having, because as time goes by, the devices we make become stronger and stronger. Pair this up with the fact that our newer firmware requires more specs to run properly and it’s a recipe for disaster for older devices.
The good news is that Android is looking to reduce this kind of collateral damage by making the newer software good, but at the same time not too heavy that it won’t work. Android has come out today and confirmed that the latest Android 4.4. KitKat will be fine to use on any handset that can only handle 512 MB of RAM. That does account for a fair chunk of Handhelds a few years old and entry to mid-range levels.
Now that we see new devices come out, it’s also a time when we will see the KitKat come with the devices. Contrary to many people’s beliefs, this has nothing to do with Android at all. If it were up to them, they would install it on every device. It’s actually the phone manufacturer that has the last word on what will be running on their devices, and this generally comes down to business reasons, as do so many other things in life.
“We have briefed all of our manufacturing partners on this and they are all very excited about it,” says Lockheimer. “They all want to ship the latest thing. It is not like they wanted to ship Gingerbread but they had to because that is what fit.”
With the latest update of the Google Play store we saw the end of one of the first Android operating systems — the Eclair. This was for much of the same reasons: The new store was too heavy and the Eclair couldn’t cope with the requirements. A similar thing could be about to happen to one of the most popular OS in Gingerbread now that Jelly Bean is by far the leading OS to be used across the Android platform. Android also eclipsed the 1 billion user mark during 2013 and will look to continue its global dominance.
For more information on what KitKat has to offer, you can head over to the Play Store and read up on the quick start guide which is available to download. The Nexus 5 is the device that is getting all the publicity to do with KitKat, because it was the first one to come out with the new software.