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KitKat continues its quest for global domination this week, with Android 4.4 rolling out to the Google Play editions of the hugely popular Samsung Galaxy S4 and HTC One, Google has revealed on its Android Google+ page.
The Google Play editions are exactly the same desirable hardware as Samsung and HTC’s flagship mobiles, but run plain Android, with none of the interface tweaks or extra apps those companies add to their phones. That’s particularly handy if you’re after the newest version of Android straight away.
Indeed, it’s only taken a few weeks since the launch of KitKat on the brilliant Nexus 5 for the chocolate-flavoured Android 4.4 to make the leap. The only devices further up the list are Google’s own Nexus products, last year’s Nexus 4 and the Nexus 7 and 10 tablets.
Not all these gadgets will be breaking out the KitKat just yet, however — the update rolls out to random devices in increments, so you may be waiting some time.
There was some speculation when the two Google Play editions were released that their software was based on foundations written by the manufacturers and would therefore take some time to receive new updates. Happily that hasn’t proven the case.
KitKat has a bunch of new interface tweaks — you can read more in our guide here — and is designed to run on devices with as little as 512MB RAM. It is slightly different to the Nexus 5, however, which as TechCrunch notes has the ‘Google Experience Launcher’, which lets you swipe left to see Google Now, among other features.
Are you still waiting for Android 4.4 KitKat? Do you think it should be rolling out faster? Let it rip in the comments, or on our up to date Facebook page.
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Galaxy S4 Google Edition explained
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