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Looks horrible. Why did they move away from Holo? It was by far the best implementation of the "flat" UI that anyone had ever made until iOS 7.
 
Like that your wallpaper shows in the app drawer now but i don't want hangouts to be the default SMS app. And the phone icon looks fugly. Home they're not going for the pastel colors of iOS. I already get enough of that.
 
I personally don't find anything wrong with the black settings UI, but I also welcome the whiter, more card-like look too.


Looks horrible. Why did they move away from Holo? It was by far the best implementation of the "flat" UI that anyone had ever made until iOS 7.

Also, if you want the blue holo accents, there are rumors that a choice of color accents can be selected. I have to imagine the blue-holo color will be an option.

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This is worth sharing here, too:

 
Wow wow wow.

If Google really releases their own stock launcher on the Play Store it's gonna be EPIC!!!

I love Android so much. Sooooo many possibilities!!

I could buy the GS5 or HTC One 2014 and install the Google launcher, Google keyboard, all their apps, etc. This is what they meant by a great Google experience to everyone I think.
 
If there is one thing I don't like it's inconsistency. If they're going to make the UI white, why the hell leave the settings in the holo black look? That's just dumb and unprofessional

One thing that I hope they don't overlook is typography. The font they are using in Google Now is really nice and thin, not sure which one it is but it makes the UI look much cleaner. Wish it was more apparent throughout the OS
 
If Google really releases their own stock launcher on the Play Store it's gonna be EPIC!!!

I seriously doubt the launcher will be epic. NOVA will still probably offer more customization.

Plus the big thing is being able to get a "stock" feel for the notification pull down bin. You've be able to get a stock launcher feel for a while. But not notifications.
 
Would a stock google launcher also affect carrier skinned things like the dialer, as one example? It would be great to have a uniform theme/experience across the entire OS, instead of just the desktop, even with a custom launcher.
 
I'm starting to think it's true the rumor that Google will release in the Play Store apps like stock camera, gallery, dialer, etc.

All that and their new launcher.

It's gonna be awesome. To me this would be huge.
 
I hope it would affect things like the Notification Tray. Samsungs is hideous. Either that or I keep my fingers crossed for any news about Cyanogenmod for it.

Its been stony silence and I'm worried.
 
All the leaks seem to be pointing towards 4.4 merging the messaging app with Hangouts, I've never used Hangouts but I know it's a chat app, so if I understand correctly it's going to kind of be like Google's iMessage, right?
 
All the leaks seem to be pointing towards 4.4 merging the messaging app with Hangouts, I've never used Hangouts but I know it's a chat app, so if I understand correctly it's going to kind of be like Google's iMessage, right?

Yeah kind of. It'll basically offering what Facebook Messenger app currently is. Basically.
 
I hope it would affect things like the Notification Tray. Samsungs is hideous. Either that or I keep my fingers crossed for any news about Cyanogenmod for it.

Its been stony silence and I'm worried.

Maybe in 4.4 Google introduces new APIS that will allow their launcher (and therefore others too) to modify also the notification center. That would be great.
 
I really hope Google release a launcher on the play store, even though i'm currently using the stock launcher extracted from android it would be awesome to have an official one updated by Google.
 
I really hope Google release a launcher on the play store, even though i'm currently using the stock launcher extracted from android it would be awesome to have an official one updated by Google.

By calling their launcher 'google experience' as evidenced in the screenshots above, it does add weight to the idea that they could release that launcher on Playstore for those people who want the 'google experience'.
 
By calling their launcher 'google experience' as evidenced in the screenshots above, it does add weight to the idea that they could release that launcher on Playstore for those people who want the 'google experience'.

I really hope so, also the file name has changed from com.android to com.google just like other google play apps so that could be more evidence.
 
All the leaks seem to be pointing towards 4.4 merging the messaging app with Hangouts, I've never used Hangouts but I know it's a chat app, so if I understand correctly it's going to kind of be like Google's iMessage, right?

Yep, it would be exactly like this we assume. So when you are messaging an android user it would use hangouts over data or wifi instead of SMS. And interesting question is will this be cross platform? iMessage obviously is not but google could do it since there is a hangouts app on iOS.
 
The Android Developers Blog just posted information on updating apps to support the new public SMS APIs. Starting with 4.4, the user will have to select a default SMS app, and only the default SMS app can write to the SMS Provider.

http://android-developers.blogspot.com/2013/10/getting-your-sms-apps-ready-for-kitkat.html

The only thing troubling is in the second paragraph.

This means that if you are using the hidden SMS APIs on previous platform versions, you need to make some adjustments so your app continues to work when Android 4.4 is released later this year.
 
Looks horrible. Why did they move away from Holo? It was by far the best implementation of the "flat" UI that anyone had ever made until iOS 7.

I like it personally. Im a big fan of Holo and this enhanced version is just awesome.

And if you dont like it you can always download a theme.
The beauty of Android

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Anyways I really look forward to 4.4 since this is going to be the version I will be using when I get the Nexus 5 when I upgrade and jump ship from iPhone.
 
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