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Last night, YouTube received what looked like a substantial update v5.9, and, of course, I rushed to start digging through the APK in hopes of finding all sorts of under-the-hood changes. Imagine my excitement when I saw the following new string buried, among other things, inside res/strings.xml:
The 2013 Nexus 7 LTE, now known as the bastard child of the living Nexus family, has not received any updates in the recent round of Android 4.4.3, and subsequently 4.4.4, releases. All of a sudden just now, the 4.4.3 factory image finally showed up, and we can only speculate how long it'll be before we see 4.4.4. For those who are counting, that's 22 days since the Nexus 4, 5, Wi-Fi 7, and 10 have all had their respective factory images available.
While the majority of Nexus and GPE devices have received their Android 4.4.3 OTAs relatively quickly, the rollout for certain other devices has certainly been... unusual. We still haven't heard anything about the 2013 Nexus 7 LTE, the LG G Pad 8.3 GPE, or the Moto G GPE, and until today, the OTA for the 2012 Nexus 7 Wi-Fi (I've been waiting for it to post both Wi-Fi and Wi-Fi+3G links together).
Now that Google I/O is upon us and the hunt for secret codes planted all over the Android dev resources is over, Google has made one person somewhere very happy. You see, earlier today, the company posted a seemingly innocent Google+ message reminding us the conference is coming soon. In the accompanying photo, we see developer advocate Colt McAnlis staring at the I/O countdown and a wall of code, working hard to bring us more videos and "tons of great content."
Nexus 4 and Nexus 10 owners, your Android 4.4.3 OTAs have finally begun, and the zip urls have been captured. A bit later than some others, but all things considered, waiting for an Android update for an extra day or two hasn't killed anyone.
The Android 4.4.3 rollout is in full swing, with the 2013 Wi-Fi Nexus 7 getting its OTA early this morning and a bunch of flavors of GPE devices and various Motos receiving theirs just a few hours ago. Nexus 5 owners with locked bootloaders even started feeling a bit snubbed waiting for their OTA to arrive, but they can now breathe with ease - not only has the OTA indeed begun, but we have the download link and manual flashing instructions right here.
Yesterday was a relatively big day for Android, at least compared to our regularly scheduled programming - Google sent us a gift in the form of the 4.4.3 update, available immediately via factory images and in AOSP. The problem with factory images, however, is that they require an unlocked bootloader to flash, so many of you opt in to wait for the respective OTAs.
Just a quick heads up for those worrying that the changes that will at some point probably cripple write access to /system even for root-enabled apps did not make it into Android 4.4.3.
Following the release of full factory images for all supported Nexus devices, Google has begun pushing Android 4.4.3 to the Android Open Source Project (AOSP). The push is ongoing and should be complete within an hour or two.
Following T-Mobile's heads up earlier today, Android 4.4.3 was just officially released by Google in the form of factory images and accompanying drivers. You can find builds KTU84M (Nexus 5) and KTU84L (Nexus 4, Nexus 7, Nexus 10) at the usual locations:
The lottery situation with Google I/O this year means nobody is guaranteed entry. Google knows this. And it's Google we're talking about. So they planted a bunch of secret codes you can redeem for a guaranteed I/O ticket. The hunt is already on, and some lucky folks have already won.
It's still Update Wednesday here in San Francisco, and just when I thought I was done for the day, Google decided to upload yet another new version of one of its core apps - Calendar v201404011. And it's a big one, folks.
Along with two new apps, today's Update Wednesday has brought us a new version of YouTube with version 5.6.31. The previous version was 5.5.27, so it became clear right away that we should expect something relatively significant as opposed to simple bug fixes. Unfortunately, I'm going to have to disappoint those of you still waiting for offline and screen-off playback - those are not here just yet. There are no major UI changes either. So, what's new then? Let's take a look.
Check out what happens in the new Google Camera app when you attempt to take a video in portrait mode:
Google is simply on a roll today! As it turns out, the stock camera wasn't the only new app to hit the Play Store today - we now have the Chromoting app as well. Chromoting, for those unfamiliar with it, is a way to securely access your computer remotely by connecting to Chrome running a special Chrome Remote Desktop app. Anyone familiar with Remote Desktop, VNC, and other similar apps should feel instantly at home with Chromoting.
What a way to start our favorite day of the week - Update Wednesday! Google just dropped the official Camera app into the Play Store, thus paving the way for quicker updates and new features without having to wait for and install OTAs.
Several weeks ago, we caught wind of Android 4.4.3 and some of the changes it could bring, consisting mostly of bug fixes, both big and small. At this point, according to several sources familiar with the matter, Android 4.4.3 has entered internal testing outside of the core Android team - a process otherwise known as dogfooding. The final release isn't expected to hit public devices for a number of weeks, so those of you expecting it any day now will have to wait just a bit longer.
You can't go 5 minutes on the web today without tripping some sort of an April Fools' mine, but even armed with this knowledge, I walked right into this one.