Here’s some news that a lot of Nexus 10 owners probably won’t be happy about. One of my favorite design changes in Android 4.4 – KitKat won’t be making it to the Nexus 10. In KitKat, Google introduced translucent navigation and notification bars which look really nice with the new launcher. And it’s definitely something I’ve been waiting to make it’s way from other third-party skins like LG’s and Samsung’s.
According to XDA, Google devs have disabled the Translucent bars on the Nexus 10 because it “performs poorly on this device”. I guess with 2GB of RAM, and the Exynos 5 dual-core processor inside, which has a quad-core Mali TS04 GPU is not enough power for the translucent bars. Although it could be due to the high-resolution, 2560×1600. There was also some source code found in the Manta source, this is from the config.xml:
<!-- Translucent status & navigation bars perform poorly on this device --> <bool name="config_enableTranslucentDecor">false</bool>
So it appears that developers might be able to turn them on in their custom ROMs, which I fully expect to happen. Now as the post author over on XDA stated, I’m sure not everyone cares about the transparent or translucent navigation and notification bars. But I do think it’s a great addition to the OS, and would have loved to see it on the Nexus 10, especially with that crazy resolution. Hopefully Google will let us know exactly why they decided to not include it in the Nexus 10. But then again, I won’t be holding my breath for it.
One thing I do hope for, is that the new Nexus 10 (whenever it is announced) will have the translucent notification and navigation bars. That could be why Google didn’t include it in the Nexus 5/KitKat announcement last week. We’ll have to wait and see.
How many of you are going to be a bit sad that we won’t get the translucent navigation and notification bars in the Nexus 10 with Kitkat? Let us know in the comments below.