[Update] KitKat 4.4.2 for China Phones Has Arrived

[GizBot]

KitKat 4.4.2 for China Phones Has Arrived

There was a lot of complaining a couple of months back about KitKat not arriving to China brand phones. Many accused them of being ‘behind the times’ The truth of the matter was that even many major brand models had just gotten KitKat officially released. That included models from Samsung and Sony to name just […]


http://www.gizbeat.com/5226/kitkat-4-4-2...s-arrived/

[mirandam]

As far as I'm concerned I'll rather stick to 4.2.x
I have two kitkat phones, a medium-high end one and a low end one, but seeing google's intents on driving users into buying phones with higher internal storage space (much like ios) and thus spending more money than actually needed, I think that strategy is dead wrong.
The new kitkat limitations are not compensated by it's advantages. Much like what Microsoft intended to do when they changed from XP to Vista. Google should have learned from that.

[WuddaWaste]

I echo your complaints about Google not supporting external media. I was under the impression they were trying to get users to rely less on local storage and come more to trust the cloud. In either case, I too lament that decision.

At the same time, after having two Sandisk Micro-SD cards go corrupt over the years and the havoc it wreaked on my phones, I can't help but wonder if there was a quality-of-experience decision made.

[erik.s]

As far as I'm concerned I'll rather stick to 4.2.x
I have two kitkat phones, a medium-high end one and a low end one, but seeing google's intents on driving users into buying phones with higher internal storage space (much like ios) and thus spending more money than actually needed, I think that strategy is dead wrong.
The new kitkat limitations are not compensated by it's advantages. Much like what Microsoft intended to do when they changed from XP to Vista. Google should have learned from that.

Fully agree, besides security related bug fixing (and possibly introducing new bugs ) there don't seem to be any significant advantages in 4.4.x that apply to my daily real world usage scenarios for a Smartphone.

[mirandam]

I echo your complaints about Google not supporting external media. I was under the impression they were trying to get users to rely less on local storage and come more to trust the cloud. In either case, I too lament that decision.
...

I think there's even more to the external access limitation, read my thread about my leagoo lead3 problem. From what I can see it looks very much like google is trying to build a brick wall around android to avoid users having their way with how they use their storage space.
In the OP I was referring to the leagoo as the low-end phone as it is typically a phone used by users who don't want to spend over $100 for a phone that functions well but doesn't need to have all the fancy stuff youngsters want these days.

In my case I bought the phone for an elderly person who will use it with big launcher as this person has sight and hand restrictions. Android is without doubt the most customizable OS capable of fulfill these requirements, However it would not be sensible to buy a 2GB/32GB phone just to overcome the limitations of kitkat not being able to install dropbox, maps and two or three other apps that occupy 20-40MB.
With that in mind the leagoo was a good choice, but alas it seems like I need to find a different phone like the dogee dg450 (which indeed has 4.2.x), to be able to use link2sd.
If the problem is indeed related to kitkat then I think google is slamming the door into many peoples faces just because they can't afford a fully loaded phone.

[Louis777]

I echo your complaints about Google not supporting external media. I was under the impression they were trying to get users to rely less on local storage and come more to trust the cloud. In either case, I too lament that decision.

At the same time, after having two Sandisk Micro-SD cards go corrupt over the years and the havoc it wreaked on my phones, I can't help but wonder if there was a quality-of-experience decision made.

Hello,

I have 3 Sandisk MicroSD 32GB it won't work in some Phones. Damaged SDCard.

I ordered my first Transcend MicroSD 32GB by Amazon. It works fantastic. Ok - Number next 64GB Tanscend. I have format from factory ext4 to FAT32. Very fast.
The Cards have 45MBits/sec. (Label is 300x)


I use in then between time - over 1 year 4x 64GB and about 16 32GB Cards by me and friends.

I recommended Transcend - it works - no damaged SDCard like the other.

By the way, in most Phones works the 64GB Cards!

Last Price last week for 32GB was 13€uro and 28€uro for 64GB by Amazon! (Prime Member)
All Cards Class10 UHS-I with Adapter!

Greetings

Louis777

[mirandam]

I mainly use Samsung and Toshiba, very good and without failures.

[WuddaWaste]

WOW! That is some fantastic information you guys. Nothing like tried-and-true testing by other tech junkies (and their friends) to let us know what is the best.

@Louis777 : Again, an amazingly helpful post. I'll definitely be snagging a 64GB Transcend in the future.

@mirandam : I just checked out the BigLauncher link you left. That's unbelievably cool. You may have forced me to buy smartphones for those last few hold-out older generation folks in my life. And due to your wisdom, I'll be cautious of budget KitKat phones for the time being.

[mirandam]

WOW! That is some fantastic information you guys. Nothing like tried-and-true testing by other tech junkies (and their friends) to let us know what is the best.
...
@mirandam : I just checked out the BigLauncher link you left. That's unbelievably cool. You may have forced me to buy smartphones for those last few hold-out older generation folks in my life. And due to your wisdom, I'll be cautious of budget KitKat phones for the time being.

Thanks, if you're interested in more "special" stuff, here's one that also works great for elder people: giant icon, in fact it's a widgit with a resizeable icon of the application to run.
This also work amazingly well if you use a tablet in your car (for example as a dvr for accident or road recording, or just as a normal gps navigator) like I do. The icons are always too small to really activate during driving taking too much time of your attention. Making an icon of 2x2 or even larger actually avoids having to concentrate too much on your tablet and thus is much safer for use during driving. This is what my tablet looks like:
   
All launchers (with the exception of the much underrated Lightning Launcher ) have this problem.
Lightning Launcher is also an extremely good choice for setting up a tablet for use by elderly people.
   
Here's a screenshot of a nook ebook used by a 91 year old woman, running with AFN CM-7 and Lightning Launcher. The big icons are custom made for the few special applications to easily run (ebook, some language learning tools, a crossword game, a calendar, email and a conversion tool).
Big Launcher is good for phones, but not for tablets. Lightning Launcher is quite complicated to learn but beats any other launcher in terms of customization.
It is also very useful on low-end smart phones as it has a very small resource footprint. And it's my first choice for use on media boxes as most launchers do not provide enough rows and columns on a full-hdmi screen, LL puts no limit on it.

[WuddaWaste]

@mirandam Outstanding post! I'm going to have to come back and revisit this message again when I have more time and a stable internet connection. You've brought up two topics simultaneously that I've been interested in exploring but haven't had the chance yet.

(1) Optimizing some sort of "Car Mode" (or maybe a whole car device) for Android
(2) Optimizing an Android phone for the aging population

I'm both really impressed and really stoked that you've already done a LOT of the leg-work here. You've probably already solved countless problems that I have yet to even consider. Very much looking forward to taking the time to explore this in the future. Thanks!

Random side-note: Is anyone else following Google's announcement and development of "Android Auto"?