Google I/O 2012 : Android 4.1 Jelly Bean

The Latest Android 4.1 Jelly Bean

Moscone West in San Francisco is where its all happening  over these next 3 days 27/28/29 June and already (day 1) Google’s Hugo Barra has revealed  the latest version of Google’s mobile operating system: Android 4.1 Jelly Bean. Update was originally thought to be a major one(Android 5.0).

The First on Googles list of added extras to Jelly Bean is Project Butter, and its meant to make the Jelly Bean experience “buttery smooth.” The Android team did so by upping Jelly Bean’s framerate to 60 FPS, and implemented vsync and triple buffering. Google Developers also have access to a new tool called systrace in the Jelly Bean SDK that displays what processes are in the rendering.

Just As we expected… Google has overhauled their mobile search experience, starting with the UI. When searching from the Google bar it brings up attractive white cards that display information picked using the Knowledge Graph. It Also has on deck is an improved voice search, which seems shockingly Siri-esque in how it can display and read out search results with a very natural sounding female voice (very nice). Swiping away those cards exposes regular search results.

Google Now “gets to the right information at the right time… automatically” by looking at your “search history, your calendar, and more to figure out what you might want. Examples include Google Now displaying information about sports scores and upcoming games without the need for telling it your favorite teams — your search history has already done that. Users bring up Google Now by tapping on the search box or by swiping up from the bottom of the screen. This, I have to say, is simply amazing.Jelly Bean on Notifications, users can now return phone calls from within the notifications shade, as well as view multiple emails without having to go into a isolated app. Apps can also tap into the notification shade, and they can be expanded by dragging down with two fingers(nice).

The Text input has been improved also, with emphasis to voice typing –Android users do not need to have a solid network connection to make the feature work anymore, this is because the speech interpretor is embeded directly onto the device. It has a predictive keyboard that is also able to guess at which word you intend to type out next.As for now only U.S. English will be supported for now. All together they’re looking to add 18 new input languages.

Jelly Bean on accessibility. The new addition, Gesture Mode,  allows blind users to navigate their devices with gestures, and support for external Braille devices has been added aswell.

Its Camera application has been reorganised with a faster way to look at your photos and shots.Android Ice Cream Sandwich users may be familiar with the Cameras app’s quick-shooting capabilities, but now users can pinch to enter a film strip view for faster perusal.

New Android Beam has been strengthened with an ability to share video via NFC, as well as the ability to pair with an NFC-enabled Bluetooth device just by tapping it.

When can I get it? Well, Google are starting to roll out downloadable updates to the Motorola Xoom Galaxy Nexus, and Nexus S, around about the 15^th of July, and SDK is available today to developers looking to dip in.