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Android 4.1 Jelly Bean Review
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.
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.
Yes, but splitting a
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."
So I go and check my "About Tablet" and I see... 4.04! What blather are you spouting?
The "blather" that very few Android users as a whole are using the latest version of the OS, with all the new features that are being promoted (like this new API for example) because handset manufacturers don't want to update old phones that are perfectly capable of running ICS, and now JB, but want you to buy a new phone instead.
The last graph I saw showed that only 6 or 7% of Android handset users were on ICS, and now JB rolls around. Google needs to address that problem somehow, but I'm not really sure what it can do given the nature of the way Android works - that freedom has unfortunate side effects in some cases.
Compare that to iOS' distribution, where a *much* larger percentage are running the most recent version, making it a lot easier for developers. the trade off, of course, is that Apple tightly controls the ecosystem.
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.