Last Updated on November 8, 2015 by Mathew Diekhake
You might remember the dilemma we were faced with the older Galaxy Note 2 receiving Android 4.4.2 Kitkat. There were all sorts of reports floating around the web. Some were saying that it will not be coming at all to the Note 2 or the Galaxy S3. That led to lots of angry people and a big debate about how long a company like Samsung should continue to support older flagship devices to show customers that there is still a reason to buy these products. It is a game of cat and mouse that Sammy must tread carefully with because if they drop support too quickly people lose faith in them. However, they also want people to buy new phones so they keep making money.
I had confidence that it would be eventually coming even if rumors were suggesting otherwise because of a leaked source telling me that Bell were bringing it out in Canada.
This news is great because it will not just be bell that is getting the firmware, but also many carriers outside of Canada also. The exact list is not revealed, but we do have sources saying that many carriers are getting the Android 4.4.2 certified so they can roll it out.
With this news, we are also expecting the Galaxy S3 to receive it given that they were both released around the same time and have a similar age. There is no reason for Samsung not to do this that we can think of that makes sense. That is our opinion on the matter, but we will hold out for official word on what will happen. Right now there is no leaked information.
Features will vary to some extent from device to device so we cannot give an exact list on what the Note 2 will have with this new KitKat build. What we can do, however, is fill you in on some of the best parts this firmware had on the Note 3 because there’s a genuine chance it will offer many of the same features.
The first thing that is instantly noticeable because it happens directly after unlocking the passcode is the speed it has when switching screen and browsing. It is noticeably faster between changing screen and swiping. We know Android love to focus on this, but it is growing to the degree now where it hard to imagine it being much faster to the naked eye. That is great because they will then shift their focus on other features instead of having to spend their time on only making an existing feature faster. On top of the speed, the software in general has better performance. Again, it will be very noticeable to the human eye and you should also have a lot fewer software bugs and issues. Recently there was a poll done and the Android Kitkat destroyed the iOS 7 in this department according to the results. Other than that the menu bar across the top of the screen is now all white. They went with mostly white to start with in KitKat, but left some colour in there because they were fearful of it looking too boring. As it turns out it was still too difficult to see properly so they decided to change it to all white now and in my opinion it looks fantastic like that. It is much easier to see and I also like the white.