The other changes
When we have gone through all of the new features
available in KitKat, the same things are always mentioned because the
change log for visible changes is pretty small. There is the Google
Experience launcher with its touchless "Okay Google" command (which is a
Nexus 5 exclusive for now, unless you want to do a bit of sideloading,
but even then you won't get the touchless command), the optimization for
lower-end phones (likely the second major reason for the nickname
change after the confluence of KitKat and Halloween), full-screen mode
for apps (which really just allows for the on-screen nav buttons to
disappear, since devs could always take over the notification bar),
Hangouts with SMS (not a KitKat exclusive anymore), Emojis (legitimately cool, if you
hate
words), wireless printing (nice, but very few people will use it),
screen recording (nice for developers and tech bloggers, but not so
useful for anyone else), a tweaked UI, better support for pedometers,
and a few other smaller features. That's a fair amount of change for an
update that only brings your system from 4.3 to 4.4, but the real
flagship feature in KitKat is the new Dialer.
Given
all you can do with smartphones these days, you may forget that they
are actually phones, I know I certainly do. For reference, I have
averaged just 300 minutes of talk time per month on my cell plan as far
back as I bothered to check, and the majority of that talk time is spent
organizing dinner prep times with my wife. I tend to chat with friends
in Hangouts, do a Skype call here and there, but since I'm a fan of the
written word, I tend to use e-mail or text the most. I don't even call
to order food if I don't have to, and use online ordering like GrubHub
more often than anything else. So, to say that my favorite new feature
in KitKat is the Dialer feels a bit strange.
I
use Google Now and voice actions more than anything else in the Android
system, but I was already in love with that service, and getting easier
access to it has been something that I've done on my own for a while
now with alternative lockscreens or always-listening options from Utter!
or other apps (although I tend to only put those on my Nexus 10,
because a tablet battery can handle that always-on better than a phone,
since neither will have the properly optimized hardware). So, while the
new access options on the Nexus 5 are nice, they aren't groundbreaking,
especially since they don't translate to other devices, not even my
Nexus 10. The visual tweaks are nice, but those things don't
fundamentally change how you use your device. I'm not much of a fan of
how Google has integrated SMS into Hangouts, so I've already switched to
Textra on the rare occasion that I have to send an MMS and don't have a
quality data signal (because all my SMS goes through Google Voice and
I'd usually use WhatsApp or email to send a picture.) I prefer words to
emojis; and, while I expect to do some screen recording eventually, it's
not an everyday thing for me.
The Dialer
But,
regardless of how little I actually make or receive phone calls, I'm
astonished at how often I find myself jumping into the KitKat Dialer. At
first, I was thrown off by the changes, because Google has radically
altered the UI of the Dialer and has ditched the Holo theme. This
definitely caused some issues at first, because I was so used to swiping
between the dialer, history, and contacts tabs, but, if you try that in
Android 4.4, you're likely to accidentally remove a contact from your
favorites list, which is the new swipe action.
What
Google basically did was make your contact's list the main screen with
your favorites prominently featured, and the most recent call in your
history right up at the top. Your favorites list has been made smarter,
because not only does it list the people you have specifically put in
your favorites, but it adds in numbers that you've called a lot, and it
rearranges your favorites automatically based on how often you call
certain numbers.
Not all of the changes are
for the best, like burying the "add new contact" option in the overflow
menu, but a quick tap will get you to your history, or slide in the
dialer from the bottom, which is easy enough. If you scroll to the
bottom of your favorites, you'll see a button to reveal the traditional
contacts list, which is the standard alphabetically sorted list that
goes on forever. At first, this choice seems annoying, because you're so
used to using that long list to get at your contacts, but the idea is
to make that list more hidden in order to promote the usage of the
biggest addition to the Dialer - a search field.
This
is Google after all. The search field will let you easily find someone
from your contacts list, as you would expect; but, it also goes beyond
that. The new Dialer also looks to minimize how much time you spend in
other apps only to be bounced back into the Dialer. This means, instead
of going to Google Maps or Yelp to find a business, you can search right
inside the Dialer app itself. The search field doesn't just return
results from your contacts list, but also nearby place results that you
would see in Google Maps. So, if you search for "pizza", you'll not only
get any pizza places in your own contacts list, but nearby pizza joints
as well.
While
that has been incredibly useful, I think the best new addition though
comes in the changes to Caller ID, because that has been supercharged
with Google as well. Now, any time you call a number, or receive a call
from a number that can be matched to a Google Maps business record,
Google will show you that business name, and possibly a picture (though
that part of the feature has been a bit dodgy so far), instead of just
the phone number. This means far fewer mystery phone numbers in your
call history, and if you're like me, it means even more than that.
I
have all of my phone calls automatically logged to Google Calendar
using the CallTrack app. Sure, a solid 75% of the calls logged are to or
from my wife, but I always find that I'll need a number that I called
just one time a few months ago, and I can't find it. Given my relatively
light call history, it usually only takes a bit of digging to find the
right date, and maybe a few random number calls to pinpoint that exact
number I needed. But now, I can just search my Call Log calendar and
find that number. Sure, it would be better if I could search my call
history directly through the Dialer, but I wouldn't be surprised if
Google has that planned for future updates.
Conclusion
The
update isn't perfect, and there are some annoyances with the new Dialer
in Android 4.4. The move away from Holo can make navigation a bit odd
at first, some features are more hidden than you may want, and some
features that you might really be hoping for won't be there just yet.
But, if nothing else, it is proof that there are pieces of smartphone
software that are still begging for overhauls. The contacts list has
been one such place, and it has seen some big
improvements
in Windows Phone. Google has attempted to do the same with Android's
People app, but developers haven't hooked in as Google had hoped.
The
Dialer may no longer the central feature of your mobile phone, but it
is still an incredibly important piece of how we use our devices. More
and more, we have been bumped out into various apps to find the phone
numbers we need. Or, we've had to accept the standard limitation that if
a number wasn't in your contact list, Caller ID would be unavailable.
Google has fundamentally changed both of those issues in Android 4.4
KitKat, and I would be surprised if iOS and Windows Phone didn't follow
suit soon enough. Sometimes features are too good to not spread to other
mobile platforms. There's a reason the notification tray has become
standard, or app stores, or quick settings toggles.
Ever
since Google completely overhauled Android with 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich,
there haven't been too many big name features in the four subsequent
incremental updates to the system. Android 4.1 Jelly Bean brought
Project Butter and Google Now. The best you could point to in Android
4.2 were Photo Spheres, because while it did bring gesture typing, that
wasn't anything new given the success of Swype. Android 4.3 had
Bluetooth 4.0 LE support, but no real consumer features. Android 4.4 is
another incremental update with a lot of smaller changes, but I think
we'll be looking back after future Android updates and saying this was
when Google made the Dialer awesome again.
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