Google Glass Gets Updated With Kit Kat, Loses Video Calling

 By 
Stan Schroeder
 on 
Google Glass Gets Updated With Kit Kat, Loses Video Calling
Credit: Mashable, Nina Frazier Hansen

Google Glass, which goes on sale later today, has gotten a last-minute update -- and it's a big one.

The biggest improvement is the switch to Android Kit Kat, meaning developers can write apps for Glass using the latest Android SDK. It doesn't bring much in terms of new features right away though -- Google points out improved battery life, better reliability, and easier updating in the future.

Other features of note are Photo Bundles, meaning your photos, videos and vignettes from each day are organized in bundles, the ability to reply with photos in Hangouts, an easier way to send feedback to Google (tap on the device info card in Settings and start talking), and voice commands now being sorted by recency and frequency.

One big feature is going away, though -- video calls.

"We hold ourselves to high standards for the features that we build, and video calls aren’t living up to these standards. Explorers have told us so directly, and fewer than 10% of them use video calls. For this reason, we’ve made the hard decision to remove video calls from Glass until the experience is better," said Google in a blog post.

Though Google Glass is not yet officially on sale, it will become available to everyone in the U.S. for one day, starting April 15 at 9 a.m. ET.

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