Google makes the Dialer awesome again: this is why you want Android 4.4 KitKat

When we have gone through all of the new features available in KitKat, the same things are always mentioned because the change log for visible changes is pretty small. There is the Google Experience launcher with its touchless "Okay Google" command (which is a Nexus 5 exclusive for now, unless you want to do a bit of sideloading, but even then you won't get the touchless command), the optimization for lower-end phones (likely the second major reason for the nickname change after the confluence of KitKat and Halloween), full-screen mode for apps (which really just allows for the on-screen nav buttons to disappear, since devs could always take over the notification bar), Hangouts with SMS (not a KitKat exclusive anymore), Emojis (legitimately cool, if you hate words), wireless printing (nice, but very few people will use it), screen recording (nice for developers and tech bloggers, but not so useful for anyone else), a tweaked UI, better support for pedometers, and a few other smaller features. That's a fair amount of change for an update that only brings your system from 4.3 to 4.4, but the real flagship feature in KitKat is the new Dialer. 

Given all you can do with smartphones these days, you may forget that they are actually phones, I know I certainly do. For reference, I have averaged just 300 minutes of talk time per month on my cell plan as far back as I bothered to check, and the majority of that talk time is spent organizing dinner prep times with my wife. I tend to chat with friends in Hangouts, do a Skype call here and there, but since I'm a fan of the written word, I tend to use e-mail or text the most. I don't even call to order food if I don't have to, and use online ordering like GrubHub more often than anything else. So, to say that my favorite new feature in KitKat is the Dialer feels a bit strange. 

I use Google Now and voice actions more than anything else in the Android system, but I was already in love with that service, and getting easier access to it has been something that I've done on my own for a while now with alternative lockscreens or always-listening options from Utter! or other apps (although I tend to only put those on my Nexus 10, because a tablet battery can handle that always-on better than a phone, since neither will have the properly optimized hardware). So, while the new access options on the Nexus 5 are nice, they aren't groundbreaking, especially since they don't translate to other devices, not even my Nexus 10. The visual tweaks are nice, but those things don't fundamentally change how you use your device. I'm not much of a fan of how Google has integrated SMS into Hangouts, so I've already switched to Textra on the rare occasion that I have to send an MMS and don't have a quality data signal (because all my SMS goes through Google Voice and I'd usually use WhatsApp or email to send a picture.) I prefer words to emojis; and, while I expect to do some screen recording eventually, it's not an everyday thing for me. 

But, regardless of how little I actually make or receive phone calls, I'm astonished at how often I find myself jumping into the KitKat Dialer. At first, I was thrown off by the changes, because Google has radically altered the UI of the Dialer and has ditched the Holo theme. This definitely caused some issues at first, because I was so used to swiping between the dialer, history, and contacts tabs, but, if you try that in Android 4.4, you're likely to accidentally remove a contact from your favorites list, which is the new swipe action.