Google Won’t Bring Android 4.4 KitKat To Galaxy Nexus
With the Samsung Galaxy Nexus celebrating its second birthday this month, we had a feeling it wouldn’t be long before Google finally stopped supporting it with the latest Android updates. And shortly after it announced the new Nexus 5 with Android 4.4 KitKat on Thursday, the search giant confirmed the Galaxy Nexus was getting left behind.
“Galaxy Nexus, which first launched two years ago, falls outside of the 18-month update window when Google and others traditionally update devices,” the company said in a post on its Nexus support forums. But it seems it’s not just an age thing.
The Galaxy Nexus is powered by an older chip from Texas Instruments, a company that no longer manufactures smartphone processors. While it has plenty of RAM (1GB), it’s likely that modifying Android 4.4 to work smoothly on this chip while keeping all of its new features intact would’ve been far too difficult, and so it may be better off with Android 4.3 Jelly Bean instead
Nevertheless, it’s likely to be hugely disappointing news to Galaxy Nexus owners, who have been used to getting the latest Android updates as soon as they’re released for the past two years. But if you needed an excuse to upgrade to the new Nexus 5, then this could be it
