Google has showcased yesterday the major update version of Android. Carrying the number 4.1 and called Jelly Bean, the new Android version puts plenty of new features and performance updates to the table.
We’re going to rolling some of them in details :
One of the biggest features is Project Butter, a deep-diving effort to improve performance and response time. Firstly, Jelly Bean focuses on performance. More specifically, improving UI responsiveness.
By making the vsync of the screen at a constant 60 frames per second, it makes the UI smooth as, you’ve guessed it, butter. It even goes as far as to anticipating where your finger is and start drawing from that point to make the UI appear even smoother. It becomes glaringly apparent the moment you run Jelly Bean next to an ICS device
and that’s exactly what Google did, they showed two Galaxy Nexus smartphones, one running Ice Cream Sandwich and the other Jelly Bean to demonstrate the huge difference that Project Butter makes. It’s really quite impressive and it shows that Android 4.1 is the fastest and smoothest version of Android yet.
The home screen has also been tweaked, adding some nice features like dynamically resizing widgets, so you no longer have to place it, resize it then move it to where you want if there isn’t enough room.
The Google search has been significantly altered too. Natural language commands are now supported as Google is obviously ready to mount a serious challenge to Siri.
When you initiate a search you get a minimalist design card. What’s really cool is when you swipe to the left it shows you a list of Google Search results.
Google Now is another new part of Google Search, which can show you public transport listings, flight information as well as sports results.
The keyboard typing is also improved, with better and more accurate predictive input and extended dictionary.
On top of that, Voice Typing in now available offline. This means that it no longer requires data connection to work and its performance won’t be affected by its slow speed. Now you can tap the microphone and dictate a message even with the phone in airplane mode.
The camera app, which was already a highlight of ICS, has gotten even better in Jelly Bean. Now taking photos got more intuitive as well. Jelly Bean brings new UI and gestures, and the gallery is slickly integrated, allowing you to quickly pull up the photo you just took with a swipe to the left. You can keep swiping through your images or even pinch to zoom out and view all your images in a filmstrip view. You can then quickly delete images by swiping them off the screen and, if you’ve manage to accidentally remove one, a quick tap of the undo button restores it. And, speaking of images, you can now share them and video using Google Beam, and Android now supports pairing with Bluetooth devices with the assistance of NFC.
The notification bar has also seen its fair share of changes. It shows you a more prominent looking clock and allows notifications from various apps like Music, Pulse and Gmail to be expanded to give you more details without having to open the app.
Android 4.1 Jelly Bean will be rolling out to Galaxy Nexus, Nexus S and Xoom devices in mid July, with a developer SDK preview available right now on the Android Developers website.
Source : Android 4.1 & Images courtesy (Engadget)