Google recently launched the latest iteration of the mobile operating system. Android 4.1, aka Jelly Bean, looks to be a really nice update. As indicated by the incremental ‘point’ release number, it’s not as major a change as it was from 2.3 to 4.0, but appears to smooth out and apply some nice additions to the OS.
Major Features
You can read a fairly detailed breakdown of the major features over on android.com but here’s a quick round up.
- Google Now / Search / Voice Search
Google’s built in search features have gotten a major overhaul. Offline voice recognition, a system that learns from you over time and presents information to you that could be useful (directions and travel times, sports results, flight details etc). - Butter
Google have worked hard to improve the graphics handling in Android. Touch responsiveness is meant to feel much better - Notifications
Notifications now provide a lot more information and can be acted on directly in the notifications tray (eg snooze alarms, send email, call users, etc) - Camera
The camera app continues to improve, with better controls after you take a photo. - Keyboard
It looks like Google are taking the lead from apps like SwiftKey and are now starting to learn the user’s typing habits over time in order to suggest words. - Widgets
Have you ever tried to put a widget on your home screen only to get a message saying “not enough space”? Well Jelly Bean automatically looks after that now and resizes things to make room.
There’s a lot more minor changes which you can read up on if you want – there’s a link below for that.
It sounds like a decent enough update and makes me yearn to own a Nexus branded device to ensure timely updates to my OS. Certainly knowing that updates will roll out straight away make things like the Nexus 7 tablet much more tempting.
Complete Changelog
The Android team have also posted a full Android Jelly Bean changelog which details all the finer points of the new release.
Android 4.1 Related Videos
Project Butter
Demonstrating the smoother graphics experience of Jelly Bean.
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