Google I/O is here, and with it the next version of Android is expected to be announced. Before that can happen, the team behind Paranoid Android has announced an update to the Final 4.4 KitKat build of the PA custom ROM. Being a final build doesn’t mean that they are not going to be working on this version any longer. What it does mean is that this final build is stable. You can use it as a daily driver and expect it to be rock solid.
The Final 4.4 PA build is based on Android 4.4.4, the most recent to come out of Mountain View. This means all of the 4.4.4 code has been merged into PA. The team has included a ton of bug fixes and added some new features too. The Volume Panel has been re-designed to fit in better with hover and be less intrusive. Hover has been tweaked to work better on tablets. A couple of changes have been added for PIE controls, including making it theme-able using Theme Engine. Native Peek should work better with sensors, and the Theme Engine was merged with upstream changes to include support for Dialer app changes and the IME switcher alert dialog. The Battery tile and Status Bar indicator now support color theme tweaking. The code has been cleaned up and several more bugs have been squashed in the Paranoid OTA and throughout the ROM build.
Paranoid Android is a pretty popular custom ROM among Nexus device owners. They officially support the Galaxy Nexus, Nexus 4 and 5, Nexus 7 (2012 and 2013), and the Nexus 10. There are plenty of unofficial builds floating around if you want to try it out on your non-Nexus device. The PA team has introduced some great features along the way, like Halo and Peek, which add some pretty cool functionality to our phones and tablets.
According to Sundar Pichai, Google is going to be announcing the next version of Android today at Google I/O. The new Android version should be available in the fall. PA is now caught up and ready for whatever Google throws at us.