Google finally unveiled the first update in 4.0 range of androids, the Android 4.1 aka Jelly Bean. Sweet as it sounds, Jelly Bean is one of the most futuristic updates I've ever seen in Android's history. A lot of features are bundled inside Jelly Bean which makes it super smooth as well as user-friendly.
Firstly, Jelly Bean has a revamped ICS interface, much better than that. And with a combination of improvements Google referred to as Project Butter, an under-the-hood attempt to make Android much smoother, has resulted in a UI that's so easy and smooth, just like butter. :) UI is so fresh and smooth and there are new and improved app, including a much better camera app. A lot of tweaks has resulted in slightly better framerates and smooth experience and even predictions (Yeah, Jelly Bean can actually predict where you're going to touch next. Cool isn't it?), Jelly Bean is super-fast and super-smooth.
Google Now is another important feature that defines the smoothness of Jelly Bean. It's an attempt by Google, to make your phone know better of you, the user. Thus, it can predict what you want and what you're going to do before you even realize it. A cool attempt right? With your day-to-day activities, Google monitors everything that you do on the phone and thus, the phone eventually gets to know more about you adn your interests, thus providing you all the features that you need and ditching the ones that you hate to see. Thus, it's a smart move by Google to make Android a much better companion for you.
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| New notifications for Jelly Bean. Looks more iOS like but is lovely! |
Google has included offline voice typing, a most-wanted feature that's really helpful for all. For the past androids, voice typing was there but could be only accessed via WiFi or cellular connection. But now, it can do it for you even without the phone being online. That's right, Google can now convert speech-to-text offline. But it's a no-brainer that the offline conversions are less accurate than the online ones but it's a good move that can make typing much faster and easier.
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| Google has finally added the offline voice typing option in Jelly Bean. |
Finally, there is the revamped Voice Search and Notifications that add up the features. Voice Search is revamped, including much better predictions and even ones that even makes Siri terrible. Voice Search is now powered by Knowledge Graph, which is according to
gadgetbox, something that'll bring you exactly what you wanted for your query followed with web results. Notifications are now more iOS like allowing you you to expand and view a little more inside them.
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| The all new Voice Search in Jelly Bean. Looks fresh and elegant and it's a Siri Killer. |
That's that about Jelly Bean and I know you're likely wanting to know about the update and the schedules. Well, for now, there isn't any clear date yet although Nexus 7 would be the first ever tablet to come with Jelly Bean. Later updates are expected to be around 2013 or 2014 and it's likely that updates won't be arriving any time soon. I'm sorry for you fellas and even I'm sad that the update wont be available anytime soon but I still have hopes of custom ROMs that can give me the experiences of Jelly Bean bit too early while I wait for the official ones. Sure, we can expect those to come out within a 2 months or less. :)
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| Jelly Bean on a Nexus 7 tablet. |
