The two-year old ‘pure Android’ device, that ushered in the
Android Ice Cream Sandwich OS in 2011 has reached the end of the end, according
to Google’s Spanish support pages.
The decision is somewhat of a surprise considering KitKat
has been designed with older, lower memory phones in mind as much as brand new,
quad-core powerhouses like the Nexus 5.
Due to that back end work, Google sees Android 4.4 Kitkat as
its best chance to solve the long-standing fragmentation problems experienced
by the OS, which has left many Android users stranded on outdated versions.
“Building a platform that makes mobile phones accessible for
everyone has always been at the heart of Android. Until now, some lower-end
Android phones couldn't benefit from more recent Android releases due to memory
constraints. With KitKat, we've slimmed down Android’s memory footprint by
doing things like removing unnecessary background services and reducing the
memory consumption of features that you use all the time.
"We did this not only within Android but across Google
services like Chrome and YouTube. RAM (or memory) is one of the most expensive
parts of a phone, and now Android can run comfortably on the 512MB of RAM
devices that are popular in much of the world, bringing the latest goodies in
Android 4.4 within reach for the next billion smartphone users,” the company
wrote on its official blog.
If Google's own-branded devices are being ignored from the
get go, it raises questions about exactly which smartphones and tablets will be
able to benefit from the KitKat update.
So far the company has confirmed only that the Nexus 4
(which succeeded the Galaxy Nexus), the Nexus 7 and Nexus 10 tablets today, as
well as the ‘Google Play edition’ Samsung Galaxy S4 and HTC One handsets will
get the update, with a host of other devices due to be confirmed shortly.
Galaxy Nexus owners, it might be time to pull the trigger on
that upgrade now.
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