Monday, January 27, 2014

Android 4.4.2 KitKat builds leak for AT&T’s Galaxy S4 and Galaxy Note 3

Samsung fans have long been waiting for the KitKat update for their devices. The delicious Android version came out months ago, and with Nexus and Moto X hardware already running the latest and greatest, it’s only a matter of time before Samsung starts releasing KitKat updates for all of its products. The Galaxy Note 3 is already getting the update in some regions, so we know the company is hard at work.

But as we all know, US carriers take forever to get updates out due to their “rigorous” testing and approval process. The good news is that owners of the latest Galaxy devices on AT&T may be getting their updates very soon, as developer designgears has done it again and leaked KitKat 4.4.2 builds for both the AT&T Galaxy S4 and AT&T Galaxy Note 3. Both builds are experimental and will need to be flashed with bootloaders, so you’ll probably lose any bootloader exploits currently available. And because it’s not an official build, it may not be perfectly safe.

If you want to give these builds a try, hit the source links and flash them! Only do this if you know what you’re doing, though, because flashing can leave you with an inoperable device. Also remember that they’re test builds, so there will likely be some bugs. The Galaxy S4 build seems to crash when using inbuilt video codecs, while the Galaxy Note 3 build has no known issues.

Hopefully the emergence of these leaked builds means that we’ll see the official OTA updates released soon. The builds aren’t final, but they are in a near-finished form. I’m excited to finally see KitKat on my Note 3. Let’s hope AT&T is fast with this one!

Source: XDA: Galaxy S4, XDA: Galaxy Note 3