Android 4.4 KitKat targets Google’s next billion users

Google has announced details of its highly anticipated Android 4.4 KitKat operating system. KitKat is designed to put Google “smarts” across the entire mobile experience, to build for what comes next in mobile devices and to reach the next billion Android users.

The Android market is growing three times faster in developing countries, but the phones that are catching on in those markets are mostly running Gingerbread, a version of Android that’s now behind the times. These phones,  have lower specs with only around 512MB of memory available, and Gingerbread fits those tech requirements.

Google was keen to tackle this technical challenge and aimed to build KitKat so it can bring even the older and lower-spec’ devices up-to-date, to provide a consistent experience across Android’s user base. Google reduced OS resources, and modified apps to stay within those boundaries, as well as rethinking how the OS manages available memory to make the most of what is present.

Google went further to help third-party developers offer their content to everyone on Android, rather than just those with the top-tier devices. A new API in KitKat allows devs to determine what amount of memory a phone is working with, and serve a different version of the app to each, making it possible for the same application to run on even the earliest Android devices.

Find out more about KitKat here.

Image by jfingas.

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