With the introduction of the Moto X and Moto G, Motorola has gone from one of the worst offenders of updating its phones on time, to being the leader in getting those updates out. At this point in time there are very few phones that can claim to be officially running Android 4.4 KitKat, but Motorola can now add the Canadian Moto G to that list as well. European users of the Moto G received their KitKat update 2 days ago, and now if you use a Moto G on the Canadian carriers TELUS, Koodoo or PC Mobile you can get the Android 4.4.2 KitKat update for your phone as well. Android 4.4 KitKat offers a whole new slew of features from its predecessor Android 4.3 Jelly Bean, including noticeable performance improvements over time on phones with less RAM like the Moto G. Since the Moto G only has 1GB of RAM vs many higher-end phones having 2GB nowadays, apps previously would hold on to RAM and not let them go, forcing you to restart the phone more often than you should to get rid of any inherent lag. KitKat fixes those issues by having better memory management features and freeing up RAM when necessary.
You’ll also find that KitKat includes the new immersive mode, which hides both the top status bar and the bottom navigation bar for apps that support it. The bars are easily brought back with a swipe up or down from the top or bottom of the device, respectively, and provides a new way of keeping you immersed in your apps. Of course there’s also the highly acclaimed new ART runtime that Google introduced with Android 4.4 KitKat, which is available on any device running KitKat. This is a new way of running apps that does all the work ahead of launching the app rather than while launching it or using it, keeping things smoother for the end-user and even saving battery life too. You’ll also find Motorola’s new KitKat camera software with this update that gives more options and takes better pictures overall. The update is 196MB in size and should be rolling out to your Moto G soon if you haven’t already received it. Motorola has an official support page up for the update and explains a little more how to manually request the update if you haven’t received it yet.