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Android 4.1 Jelly Bean Review

Posted by Soulskill on from the tastes-good-except-for-the-white-ones dept.

New submitter codysleiman points out a review of Android 4.1 (Jelly Bean) at The Verge. They say the look and feel of Google's mobile operating system has improved in a few different ways. Aesthetically, it isn't trying quite so hard as it did in Gingerbread and Ice Cream Sandwich, making the UI less of a distraction. While performance benchmarks aren't much different, Jelly Bean forces 60fps throughout and lets the GPU, CPU and display run independently, so it at least feels smoother and more responsive. Another big area of improvement is notifications: "You can tap a share button on photos, calendar appointments give you a snooze or email attendees option, missed calls provide direct call-back buttons. ... Google has introduced APIs for actions on notifications and I hope that app developers take advantage of them, because it would be nice to have more actions on a variety of different apps." The new on-screen keyboard also got some much-needed updates, and Google Now looks promising.

3 of 255 comments (clear)

  1. A nice step forward by WiiVault · · Score: 5, Interesting

    It seems Jelly is exactly what it should be; a refinement on ICS. I must say as a mixed mobile OS user (Touchpad ICS+ Nexus, iPhone 4, Sammy Wp7) that it is really nice to hear Google is going after lag issues. If I didn't use iOS or WP7 I likely wouldn't notice, but despite some real solid improvement since Honeycomb Android has to me never felt quite as swift. To me it was really the only thing left that Google was notably behind on and especially frustrating on high end hardware, and makes me even more secure in my Nexus 7 pre-order. I'm really glad to see that unlike fans on all sides of the issue Google is able to identify concerns and kick them fast. Bodes very well for their new tablet focus.

  2. No mention of new Google Voice Search? by Terrasque · · Score: 5, Interesting

    That is one of the things I think looks really interesting.

    It also seem to have improved vastly over not only the old version, but also over Apple's Siri.

    Some videos of the new function:
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XLyuWEWqYqQ
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kw-RzN4xYyE
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fHkhp6BwnGo

    I mean, it's still gimmicky, but it looks like an improvement. But for me it's not gonna be practical until it support my language, Norwegian. How useful is it when it can't understand the norwegian names on my contacts? Or street names? Or store names?

    Still, it looks like a really fun toy... *wants*

    --
    It's The Golden Rule: "He who has the gold makes the rules."
  3. Re:perception & reality by BradleyUffner · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Jelly Bean forces 60fps throughout and lets the GPU, CPU and display run independently, so it at least feels smoother and more responsive.

    What is the difference between feeling "smoother and more responsive" and being "smoother and more responsive"?

    I'm not trying to be snarky, I'm asking seriously.

    Here is a good example.
    A swipe animation that takes 1 second to complete, rendered with 4 frames of animation.
    vs
    A swipe animation that takes 1.15 seconds to complete, rendered with 30 frames of animation.

    The first example will ACTUALLY be more responsive, while the seconds one will FEEL more response to most people.