When you step back and look at just how powerful smartphones have become, there's one important tool that's been criminally neglected: the phone dialer. At least that's what Google thinks. "Smartphones have been getting smarter and smarter, and yet the dialer seems to be stuck in a feature phone world for some reason," said Google engineer Dave Burke, who moments later unveiled a new dialer that's debuting with Android 4.4. According to Burke, KitKat brings with it a modernization of the dialer — a utility that's obviously essential to voice calls, but one that's rarely gotten much attention throughout Android's evolution.



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