Help Upgraded to 4.3 but I'm missing new capabilities

[tommy1005]

I upgraded my S4 today to 4.3 and I thought I was going to get a lot more capabilities for my phone than I actually did.

First of all I thought my camera would update to something like this: New 'Google Play Edition' phones show off subtle changes to Android OS | Computerworld Blogs

that didn't happen....

2nd of all I thought I would get a new dialer: What's new in Android 4.3? More than you might think | Computerworld Blogs

That didn't happen..

Overall I'm disappointed since I thought those 2 features looked the coolest and I didn't even get them? I hate my stock dialer I'm using now too, but I love all the settings in it so I can't just get a new dialer.

My Carrier: Verizon

 

[Petrah]

Who's your carrier? The only reason I can think of for you not to get them is that your carrier disabled the new features before sending you the OTA update. Not sure why they'd do that.

I bought my S4 directly from Google, so I received all of the updates unaltered.

 

[tommy1005]

Verizon

 

[SebaKL]

I think you misunderstood the difference. Both these features you are talking about, are 4.3 Vanilla android. They come exclusively to Nexus, Galaxy and HTC Google edition ONLY. You S4 is running TouchWiz, Samsung's native skin on top of Android OS, and it comes with it's own camera, dialer, contacts, messaging etc...

The only way to get these features, would be to change your rom from TouchWiz to pure Android, in which case you will lose pretty much all the other features (smart stay, smart alert, gesture, air view etc...) which are exclusive to Samsung's S4.

 

[Petrah]

Why on earth would Samsung leave out a dialer update that's beneficial to the user (not really asking so much as thinking outloud).

But then again, carrier branded S4's have the option of where to save the camera photo's. The Google Edition doesn't offer the option, which is just silly since both phones have the ability to use an SD card.

 

[alextop30]

The dialer not being updated I understand. It is combined with the contacts app and you have to overhaul both of them at the same time. In addition Samsung has some features built into the old dialer and contacts app which were hailed as useful. For example when you are at a contact and pickup the phone to your ear and it dials. Takes time to put that code into a new dialer.

Branded phones generally will receive the updates not so much to add the new features that come up in vanilla Android but to add security fixes and stability into the operating system. Samsung has gone to great lengths to build on top of Android something that does work but needs lots of molding to accept the new version of the operating system.

Anyway I just hope 4.3 brings a bit better battery life to stock.