Google Glass Gets KitKat Support And Improved Photo Browsing, Loses Video Calls

Anybody will be able to buy Google Glass tomorrow, but ahead of this, Google is giving the Glass software an update. There are a couple of new features in this update, including new tools for making working with photos easier, but Google has also decided to remove the option to do video calls from Glass for the time being.

Google says video calls from Glass didn’t live out to the company’s “high standards.” Only about 10 percent of Glass users currently use them, and because of this, the Glass team has made “the hard decision to remove video calls from Glass until the experience is better.”

It’s unclear when this feature will return, but Google tells Glass users to keep an eye out for video-streaming apps in the MyGlass app library for third-party solutions. Given that video calls from Glass were always one of the device’s marquee features, it does come as quite a surprise that Google would remove this, even if just a few percent of its current users use it. 

As for the photo updates, Google now finally bundles photos together so when you scroll through your timelines, it’s not cluttered by lots of photos, and the photos you take are easier to find. Glass now bundles all your videos, photos and vignettes into a single bundle for each day. If you take a lot of photos on Glass, that’s definitely a major improvement.

Despite losing the video calling feature, Hangouts on Glass are still an option for chats, and with this update, Google now allows users to more easily send photos in Hangout messages.

Other new updates include a voice command menu that’s now sorted by frequency and recency, as well as the ability to more easily send feedback about Glass right from the device.

According to Google, there are a few more features in this update, too, but it hasn’t updated its Glass Journal blog yet. We will update this post with a list of all the new features as Google makes this information available.

3 best apps to improve Android browsing experience

Kris Carlon 2014-04-07T16:00:00Z2 days ago

Kris Carlon

Putting down roots in Berlin after six years of traveling is a major step for Kris Carlon, who has spent more time living out of a tent lately than sitting at a desk. Kris comes to the AndroidPIT Editorial Team via a lengthy period spent writing on art and culture in Australia and other places he has lived. He joined the Android community while resurfacing in civilization back in 2010 and has never looked back, using technology to replace his actual presence in other people's lives ever since.

Browsing the web on Android devices has fairly quickly come to replace a lot of desktop or laptop surfing in recent times. With larger, better resolution screens, more Wi-Fi and data plans and more and more mobile lifestyles, we consume way more web content on our mobile devices than we once did. But making that experience even better is always welcome too. Here's three great apps to improve your web browsing experience on Android.

Reading and browsing the web on your phone doesn't have to be a painful experience. / © AndroidPIT

Link Bubble

I was a fan of Link Bubble when it was first announced, and when Link Bubble was released I practically became a cheerleader. Link Bubble is a beautifully simple idea: rather than sitting and staring at a blank page while it loads after clicking on a link, Link Bubble lets you pre-load the page before it pops up, meaning that you can continue to read the page you're on until your link is ready. The free version lets you use Link Bubble in only one app and only open one bubble at a time, but the paid version supports all apps and unlimited bubbles. Definitely worth the investment in my mind.

Link Bubble pops up when you hit a link and loads in the background. You can then read or share the page. / © AndroidPIT/Chris Lacy

Javelin Browser

Javelin first caught my attention on Reddit when it was released as Jerky – a browser designed specifically for accessing porn – where it received a lot of criticism from the community for being a nice idea tainted by the porn angle. When the developer then released a straight browser under the name of Javelin, I decided to give it a go and I really like it. Javelin is very streamlined and minimal, uses gestures to switch between tabs and has built-in Ad Block. Your bookmarks are sorted according to how often you use them and if you still want incognito or web-filter bypass proxies, they're available too. Far and away the best part of Javelin though, is Reading Mode, which takes any web-based content and extracts the text which then appears in a great, easy to read (and ad-free) format.

Not only is Javelin a nice clean browser, but Reading Mode (right) is a fantastic addition to web browsing. / © AndroidPIT/Steven Goh

Pocket

I was kind of late to the Pocket party, but I wish I had gotten on board a lot sooner. Pocket is a very simple idea: save web content for offline reading later on when you have time. Before installing Pocket I just used to leave multiple tabs open in my browser and hope caching did its job. Otherwise I would bookmark pages that I would then completely forget about. But Pocket takes those rather clumsy solutions and makes them a lot nicer by keeping images intact and filing everything under a nice RSS-style index for offline access.

Pocket is a nicely designed offline reading tool that also saves images with your content. / © AndroidPIT/Read It Later

With these three apps I use the mobile web completely differently to the way I always used to. From saving time while loading pages with Link Bubble to making pages easier to read and without advertising with Javelin to saving content for offline access with Pocket, my web-based browsing and reading is that much faster, easier and more convenient thanks to the efforts of clever developers and their great ideas.

What other great web experience apps can you recommend? What's your browser setup?

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