The Samsung Galaxy S4 I9505 LTE received the Android 4.4.2 yesterday and today it’s the AT&T Galaxy S4’s turn to get the Android 4.4.2 firmware that has the build number KOTH49H.
Samsung has a very busy week unveiling many products at the MWC, including this year’s Galaxy S5. Many people aren’t planning on upgrading their Smartphone straight away, though, because a lot of people are on 2 year contracts, and it doesn’t make sense to break them. For that reason we can still expect the manufacturers and phone carriers to look after the older handsets like the S4.
The Android 4.4.2 originally came out to the S4 over a month ago, so there is nothing new coming out to the device itself. However, if you are only keeping up with the AT&T news then you might not be aware of what features it does have. We’ll go through some of them now for you so you understand what is different once it is installed.
The camera app is on the lock screen. Look for a small camera icon in the bottom right corner of the phone. This makes it possible to open the camera application without the need of a passcode. After clicking the icon, it will open up with all the normal features that you have when taking photos. The status bar that runs along the top of the screen now has white icons. They did get changed in the original KitKat update, but they weren’t completely white. Now, to make things easier to see, all the different status symbols will be white. Google Hangouts is altered to be the default SMS and MSS applications. It is found with your widgets on the app screen. Users can change it back manually if they don’t like it though. Google included this option instead of changing it back to the way it was in the next firmware release after they found out people didn’t like it.
Hopefully that has informed you guys on some of the bigger changes. Of course, there is more, but most of them are hidden inside of the software to do with things like bugs and performance enhancements. You should notice this build is even smoother to use than the last. We know Android keep managing to do this better as time goes on.
AT&T have been in the news a lot lately. They reported the operating income of 2013 Q4 earnings to be up 54%. They also informed us that 93% of Smartphones are postpaid phones. With AT&T performing so well financially, there was talk of them buying out Vodafone for 82 billion dollars. Those rumors were quickly laid to rest by executives a few days later. AT&T has also made some changes to the 10GB of shared data less expensive for monthly subscribers.
This update will come out at different times for all owners. You might get yours today, but your friend might be waiting until next week. There is no way to find out when it’s coming for you. What you can do to check if it has arrived is navigate to Settings, More and ‘About Phone’. In here will display if there are any updates ready to be installed.
Don’t forget to back up all of your data before you start installing the update. You can use the handsets internal SD card for this.