There have been several photos and videos recently purporting to show the new Nexus 5 handset in action, but this is the first time you'll see the KitKat OS.
Thanks to Italian blog Tutto Android, we now have a first glimpse at what Google is expected to announce to the world, the new Android OS 4.4 running on the Nexus 5 handset.
As we pointed out before, the handset itself doesn't offer anything really interesting to look at, and while it might well be an awesome phone, what we are most excited about is seeing what new dashes of Google magic are sprinkled in the software.
What's revealed?
Firstly, the Nexus 5 will have the same 'always listening mode' that we first saw in the Motorola X. Tutto Android reports that you can search on the phone by first saying 'OK Google'.
The blog is also saying that you 'might' be able to send messages from Google Hangouts without having network connectivity. It doesn't go into how this could be possible, but this is the sort of tidbits about Android that get us excited.
Where's the Gallery gone?
One strange thing we noticed while looking at the photos is that the 'Gallery' app is absent from the new App Drawer -- it's missing from between the Email and Gmail app shortcuts. This means either that the app has a new name and appears elsewhere in the drawer, or that Google is adding a 'local storage' section to Google Photos and hoping this 'persuades' (read: railroads) Nexus owners into uploading their photos to Google Plus.
Not that this would be the worst thing in the world, given how good Google's auto-enhancement of photos is, after they have been uploaded and stored in its cloud service.
And yet, this still feels like the tip of the iceberg. Hopefully Google take to the stage soon and show us exactly what KitKat has in store for the smartphone world.
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