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Just last week, Android Police had gotten their hands on a leaked version of the Play Store v4.4. Which was easily confirmed with Android 4.4. The update isn’t really all that big. The only real changes are the slide-out navigation drawer, which we are seeing on many other Google apps now. It’s known as the hamburger-style navigation. It’s got the three bars in the corner and by swiping from left to right you can slide out the additional navigation drawer. It’s actually pretty nice and takes some stuff out of the overflow menu in the Play Store.
There was also some rumors fo the Play Newsstand section being part of this update. Which the app hasn’t been torn down yet, but we’re assuming the code is there so Google can go ahead and turn it on once they’ve announced the new feature. Play Newsstand is kind of confusing to me, since there’s already Google News and Google Currents. Not to mention Play Magazines. Play Newsstand sounds like it’ll be in the middle of all of that. Maybe one central place for them all?
So far all that’s confirmed new in the 4.4.21 version is the slide-out navigation drawer. As we dig deeper into the apk, we’ll see what else is new in this version. Hopefully more goodies to keep us busy until Google finishes up with KitKat starts pushing that out to the rest of us.
As usual, we’ve got the APK down below (thanks to Android Police). Note that you’ll need to have Unknown Sources checked in settings and it is signed by Google, thus it will overwrite your existing Play Store app and upgrade it. What’s interesting about this version is that it is a bit bigger than 4.3.11 which was the last version. It’s 5.84MB, vs the 5.75MB in the 4.3.11. Although dating back to version 4.2.9 which was 5.84MB, interesting to see that the Play Store has never gone over the 6MB size yet. With Google continually adding new features, that may change soon.
Download: Google Play Store version 4.4.21