After the upgrade to #KitKat on my GPE S4, PowerAmp can still play the music on my microSD card (/storage/extSdCard/Music) and the magnetometer in the phone works more or less correctly for the first time since I bought the phone, so Google Sky Map is usable without switching to manual mode, and compass apps work. (Yes, I “recalibrated” previously, over and over, to no avail.)

I liked the old blue icons better than the new grey ones but given that I have a greyscale wallpaper the grey icons are a better æsthetic match. ☺

The new, more muted touch feedback noise is probably an objective improvement but will take a few days to get used to.

I didn’t have the low-resolution front camera, “unfortunately” failures, or completely inaccessible microSD that others have reported at http://forums.androidcentral.com/samsung-galaxy-s4-google-edition/338363-galaxy-s4-google-play-edition-official-android-4-4-kit-kat-rolling-out-now.html

I have not yet tested the Android/data/com.example.foo app-specific writeable storage nor the Android/obb general storage directories mentioned at http://source.android.com/devices/tech/storage/ and obviously since I just pulled this down, I don’t know about the impact on battery life.

Curtis Olson December 05, 2013 14:21

So far no complaints here on my Nexus 4 kitkat upgrade … other than it was a bit underwhelming because I think most of the interesting stuff was already rolled out via individual app updates.  Sounds like I don’t stray far from the beaten path with my phone usage though compared to others.

Imported from Google+ — content and formatting may not be reliable