Aurich Lawson Android 4.4, KitKat was released on October 31, 2013, or at least, that's what you can say about one device: the Nexus 5. For the rest of the ecosystem, the date you got KitKat—if you got KitKat—varied wildly depending on your device, OEM, and carrier. For every Android update, Google's release of code to OEMs starts an industry-wide race to get the new enhancements out to customers.