Russian smartphone and tablet users can rejoice. Yandex has officially announced the release of a new Yandex Kit firmware based on Android. The firmware is specially made for Russian-speaking people, adapted to the requirements and specifics of the CIS countries and should become revolutionary.

Yandex Kit - an innovation among standard firmware

Cyanogenmod is an excellent firmware that is an alternative to the standard one. She has already found many fans and is actively joining the masses. Yandex also decided to keep up in this direction and is releasing its own version of the OS for mobile platforms, which is called Yandex.Kit.

One of the nice features is that it takes into account local and geo-dependent interests. The built-in keyboard perfectly understands cases and knows many slang words.
Kit has built-in data from Yandex.Directory, so finding the nearest contact information will not be a problem at all. This will also make it possible to determine the name of an incoming unknown call.

You can change your smartphone and transfer your entire contacts very easily through.

The slang innovation will be very visible when using the address book. For example, when the user enters Sash, Shura or Sasha, all matching options will be shown to him. In addition, data from the online directory will be loaded into the book.

The most common way to come up with or set a complex password is to enter it in Russian letters in the English layout. Kit will provide a unique feature for a special keyboard mode, in which both Russian and English letters will be displayed simultaneously.

Yandex Kit implements careful battery consumption, which minimizes the number of ongoing processes.

The interface will look like familiar desktops, only in 3D. Full list applications are completely removed, and all new ones are added to the main screen.

Unfortunately, Yandex Kit will only be on Huawei smartphones Honor and Explay Flame, but that's it for now. Also, users of this firmware will receive 10 discounts on purchases in the application store and 50 GB of cloud disk service.

The first models will be available in spring 2014.

An operating system for smartphones and tablets, developed on the basis of open source code Android. A former member of the Yandex.Kit development team announced the closure of the Rusbase project. The information was confirmed by an employee of the partner company.

According to the same source, the Kita development team has been disbanded, and its members are scattered among other projects. In addition, some of the developers of "Kit" left the company. In April of this year, the team that worked on the design of Yandex.Kit posted on Facebook page"Goodbye Yandex" entry.

The core of the team working on the project were employees of the St. Petersburg company SPB Software, acquired by Yandex in 2011. The studio specialized in complex software products for mobile platforms, including the alternative SPB Shell for Android.

Yandex representatives deny that the project is being closed:

“We launched Yandex.Kit on February 19, 2014. Last year, we agreed on the pre-installation of Yandex.Kit on Explay, Huawei, Smarto, DEXP devices,” the Yandex press service reported. “Now this product is not actively being developed, including due to opposition from Google. Currently, as far as we know, some Smarto and DEXP tablets remain for sale on Yandex.Kit.”

In February of this year, Yandex filed an application with the Federal Antimonopoly Service demanding that Google be checked for violations of Russian antimonopoly legislation. Yandex believes that Google is violating the principle of free competition in the Android smartphone market, as it puts pressure on manufacturers who want to use their own firmware versions. In mid-April, the FAS granted Google's request to postpone the consideration of the case - the next meeting of the commission on this issue is expected to take place in the second half of May. Yandex's statement was supported by the FairSearch alliance (including Microsoft, Nokia, Oracle and others), which back in 2013 called on the European Antitrust Commission to consider a proposal to separate the Android operating system from Google.

In April of this year, the European Commission sent an official statement to the search giant with claims - the document claims that Google is using its dominant position in the Internet search market in the European Economic Area (EEA) to promote its own services for the sale of goods and services. If Google is found guilty, the corporation faces a fine of 10% of its annual revenue (about $6 billion).

For Yandex, the value of "Kit" was the replacement of all pre-installed services from Google with the corresponding Yandex services (maps, browser, calendar, etc.). Google Play is replaced by “Yandex.Store”, and Yandex.SpeechKit is used instead of Google Voice. The company needed its own mobile OS, since the sharp increase in sales of Android smartphones on the Russian market in 2012 began to threaten the dominance of the company's services in the CIS markets and Yandex's revenue from search. In 2010, Android had a share of 11% in Russia, in 2011 the share grew to 29%, and in 2012 - to 58% (data from J’son & Partners Consulting). In 2014, Android was installed on 86% of all smartphones in Russia.

For smartphone manufacturers, Yandex.Kit was distributed free of charge, but this did not have much impact on the market position. Analysts believe that Yandex.Kit failed to interest users.

Owners of Android devices increasingly prefer to search for information on Google. According to a Morgan Stanley survey, 51% of Android smartphone users prefer Google search, and only 41% prefer Yandex. According to Liveinternet.ru, Yandex is the most popular search engine on the Runet. But Liveinternet.ru also records a drop in the share of Yandex: over the year it decreased by 2.8 percentage points to 58.9% (at the end of January 2015), and the share of Google over the same period increased by 5.9 percentage points. p. up to 32.8%.

Tablets and smartphones with Yandex.Kit pre-installed are currently available for purchase in Yandex.Market. The Yandex.Shell interface for smartphones, based on SPB Shell, is also available for download. A source close to the company told Rusbase that the Erica project continues to exist within Yandex, which involves an even deeper modification of Android. It is no longer led by the former SPB Software team, but by Tigran Khudaverdyan, the head of mobile and software products at Yandex.

At the end of 2014, Yandex earned 50.767 billion rubles. Net profit amounted to 17.02 billion rubles. The majority of revenue (90.2%) came from contextual advertising services.

Anton Nekhaenko and Elina Asfaganova worked on the material.

Convenient and visual interface that makes working with the device easier and more enjoyable Android based. It takes very little time to set up the screens. The interface can automatically distribute widgets and programs across screens. Useful and necessary widgets can be placed on one screen - one glance will be enough for you to be aware of current city events, weather and traffic conditions.
The Yandex.Shell address book contains phone numbers of organizations. Just enter a query—for example, “restaurant”—and the built-in search will show you the phone number and address of a nearby restaurant. If they call you from unknown number, then Shell will check the presence of this number in the database. And if this number belongs to an organization, then you will see its name in the call log.

Improvements compared to Y.Shell:
T9 search appeared in the dialer. This is good. But! In such an implementation, it would not hurt to combine the dialer window with the Journal. And make the dialer keyboard collapsible and expandable.
The Log finally displays the SIM card from/to which the call was made (relevant for dual-SIM users)
You can create folders in the bottom bar

Deterioration:
App Drawer disappeared

Remains unchanged:
They never made a transparent status bar

The position of the Yandex team on this launcher:
1) this version of the shell is a “leaked” version of the whale beta, and is not supported outside the official versions of the whale and will not be supported.
2) we read bug reports and requests, but you shouldn’t expect us to have any reaction to them, because see point 1.

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And so, the tradition of creating custom firmware has reached Russia. Of course, local programmers know the needs of the market and average users better, so the product is primarily intended for residents of the post-Soviet space. What is it Yandex.Kit, what are the main features of this innovation and what does the whales have to do with it - we will try to explain in this article.

Of course, at the core Kita lies AOSP, it couldn’t be otherwise. It's surprising why Yandex Only now have they decided to take this step, because both companies have been competing with each other for a long time, the Russian search engine is in every possible way cosplaying all Western innovations, but it couldn’t decide on the firmware for the most popular operating system. Creators Yandex.Kit emphasize that the search engine processes more than 250 million requests from Russian users, which means he knows thoroughly about all the needs and characteristics of the local audience.

In addition, Keith understands Russian much better than his competitors. First, the built-in keyboard knows what cases are and how to apply them in practice. Thus, the input of words and the output of hints occur taking this feature into account. The keyboard also displays Cyrillic and Latin at the same time. Secondly, Keith is not unfamiliar with the different forms of names inherent in our speech, so it will be more difficult to get confused in the address book, the latter, by the way, is endless. True, the developers do not explain why you need so many contacts, but the marketing move is not bad. Another feature of the address book is integration with Yandex.Directory, this allows you to search for organization phone numbers directly in the application. Interaction with the service will also allow you to identify some unknown incoming numbers. Data will be downloaded from the cloud, which means a timely Internet connection will be required.

And, of course, everything available in vanilla Android"e services (or almost all) are replaced with theirs Yandex analogues. On the one hand, this is good, since these analogs are more consistent with the needs of the market (as, in fact, it was stated), but their quality in some places is very different from the originals, which is, in fact, bad. Let's start with Yandex.Maps– all applications that use geolocation will be linked to them (all that are subject to Yandex). Another important point is a voice recognition technology Yandex.SpeechKit. There should be no complaints here, because it’s our native language. Will there be Yandex.Kite? It’s unlikely, because Yandex has its own application market. Will I be able to get access to a normal market? Most likely yes, but there is a high probability that you will have to hack something.

Also in favor of the absence Google Play says the fact that in Yandex.Kite there will be no list of applications, instead they will be sent straight to the homescreen, which means that the developers expect that you will not have many applications. In such a situation, access to a normal market can be blocked so that there is a temptation to install a lot good apps there wasn't. By the way, this will also fail for the reason that the memory on smartphones will be negligible, especially on more budget ones.

Used as a homescreen in the firmware Yandex.Shell. According to the developers, the new home screen completely redrawn and refurbished to suit all needs. As a result, users should experience an "ergonomic and intuitive clear interface". It looks like a carousel, but the screenshots don’t inspire much confidence. Maybe on the device this decision will look more mature.

In addition, the developers announced moderate power consumption of smartphones on Yandex.Kite and increased operating time. And all by minimizing the number of processes running simultaneously on the device. It looks something like this: developers sacrifice multitasking to extend the operating time of the device. At the same time, you can save on hardware.

It is not clear why such an emphasis is placed on the convenience of switching from an old smartphone to a device on Kite. If in the case of normal Android devices can back up and move from one smartphone to another, then the developers from Yandex boast that " Yandex.Moving will help you transfer the most important thing - contacts from your address book." But what about installed applications, call lists, text messages?

Install Yandex.Kit There will be no separate option for a smartphone. At least that's what the firmware creators say. In this case, anyone can sign up as a tester and receive the necessary files. To do this, you need to write a letter about who you are, why you need Whale and what experience do you have in testing new firmware? Anyone interested is asked to write here: [email protected]. It is clear that after some time Yandex.Kit will appear somewhere on XDA: members of the forum there simply cannot help but become interested in such a phenomenon.

Smartphones that are easy to use

You can see this slogan on the page Yandex.Kit dedicated to smartphones on Kite: Huawei Honor 3 Yandex And Explay Flame. Sales of these devices will begin in the spring of 2014, and users should first of all expect “built-in applications and technologies that help millions of people every day” and 50 bonus gigabytes for Yandex.Disk. Regarding technical characteristics, then they are as follows: Huawei Honor 3 Yandex will be equipped with a 4.7-inch display with a resolution of 1280x720 and a pixel density of 312 PPI, a quad-core Hisilicon K3V2E processor at 1.5 GHz, 2 GB of RAM, 8 GB of memory with support for microSD up to 32 GB, a 13 MP main camera and a 1 MP front camera ,3 MP, 2150 mAh battery and operating Android system 4.2.2. Regarding Explay Flame, then it will be simpler: a 4.5-inch display with a resolution of 960x540 (pixel density is not specified, as it is negligible), a quad-core MTK 6582M processor at 1.3 GHz, 8 and 2 MP cameras, 1 GB of RAM, 4 GB of memory , 1700 mAh battery, Android 4.2 OS. Pricing is not yet known, but more information will appear on MWC 2014 in a week.

Well, the whale here most likely symbolizes power.