Google’s android 4.4 Kit Kat is designed to work with the latest high end smartphones and also older devices with lower specifications and budget android devices.
In an interview with Read Write, Google explained how they managed to get Android 4.4 Kit Kat work on devices with lower specifications, they gave the development team working on the OS, Nexus 4 smartphones with just 512MB of RAM.
This was called ‘Project Svelte’, and the aim of the project was to bring the latest features of Android to virtually any smartphone by any manufacturer.
“We were kind of joking that, when I started, the first thing that I was working on was Project Butter to make the system smoother. The thing is, butter puts on weight. So then I did Project Svelte to lose weight. So now my contribution to Android is basically zero,” Dave Burke, the head of engineering for Android at Google, joked in an interview with ReadWrite.
They used a modified Nexus 4 with 512MB of RAM and adapted the handsets resolution to a qHD one with 540 x 960 pixels, which they considered to be the ‘sweet spot for entry level smartphones’
The Nexus 4 comes with a quad core processor, although Google reduced the processors to two, and also lowered the clock frequency of the processor.
They then went about building Android 4.4 Kit Kat to run on the lower specifications on their modified Nexus 4, which allowed them to design an OS that would work well with a wide range of devices.
Hopefully Android 4.4 Kit Kat will make an impact on reducing Android fragmentation, although it all depends on the manufacturers on whether they will release the update for their various devices.
Source Read Write
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