Android 4.4 KitKat to have a new launcher

Ah yes, the days leading up to the release of a new device, and a new OS. The trickle of rumors involving the Nexus 5 and Android 4.4, aka KitKat, has turned into a full on flood. Today’s rumor, brought to you courtesy of Android Police, involves the launcher.

With Android 4.4, we will likely see another one of Androids engrained system apps become an app available in the Play Store as Google continues to separate core apps from the system itself. Of course that’s speculation in that Google will release it to the Play Store. Should this new Google Experience launcher be the real deal, it looks like it will add some new features.

   1. We have transparent navigation and status bars while we’re on the homescreen. They look to fade to black when you enter an app.
   2.The very left homescreen is dedicated to Google Search/Now making it an integral part of the Google Experience.
   3.Said screen has a one-touch button for setting a reminder.
   4.While earlier builds of Android limited the number of homescreens to 5, KitKat looks to add the ability to expand that indefinitely. When you create a new one, Google automatically adds one to the right so that you don’t need to manually add anymore.
   5.App folders will no longer be limited to 16 apps and have a scrollable ability to accommodate more app shortcuts.
   6.Widgets no longer appear in the app drawer and rejoin the homescreen with a long press.

The reason behind the idea that this will see a proper Play Store release is all in a name change. That being com.google.android.gel instead of com.android. As it has been pointed out, Google added the “.google.” to all the apps that it’s separated from the core of Android. For example, Google Calendar went from com.android.calendar to com.google.android.calendar. The same happened with both the keyboard and Gmail.

With Android 4.4 looking to “an amazing Android experience available for everybody,” separating even more core apps from the system itself seems plausible. Of course with any rumor it has the ability to go either way. While I hope that this, the camera app, and the recent Hangouts rumor all comes to pass, it’ll be interesting to see what the finished product of KitKat will look like. If Google could just go ahead and announce both the new Nexus and Android 4.4 that would be great. If this isn’t enough to satisfy your need for a fix, the guys over at Android Police made some mock ups to salivate over. Enjoy!