You may still be salivating for Ice Cream Sandwich, but today, there's a new Android dessert in town.
Google officially took the wraps off of Android 4.1, Jelly Bean, at its Google I/O developers' conference this morning. The new OS will ship on the Nexus 7 tablet also announced this week; it's scheduled to roll out to the Galaxy Nexus and Motorola Xoom in July (though upgrades for the Verizon versions of those devices, as you'd expect, will likely take longer due to Verizon's involvement). The Nexus S is also confimed to get the Jelly Bean upgrade at some point in the near future.
I've been spending the afternoon using Jelly Bean on both the Nexus 7 tablet and a GSM Galaxy Nexus phone. Here are my first impressions:
Android 4.1 is a refinement -- not a ground-shifting upgrade.
Ice Cream Sandwich was a massive upgrade to the Android platform. Jelly Bean is far more incremental. It's really more akin to the Froyo to Gingerbread (2.2 to 2.3) upgrade than the Gingerbread to Ice Cream Sandwich (2.3 to 4.0) bump.
That said, Android 4.1 is certainly not insignificant. It has some powerful performance enhancements and some sweet new features, too.
Android 4.1's performance improvements are definitely noticeable.
Google calls its Jelly Bean performance push "Project Butter" because it's meant to make everything run more smoothly than ever. Based on the time I've spent testing Android 4.1 so far, the buttery name is well earned.
So what's "Project Butter" all about? Take a deep breath: Google improved the system frame-rate and display refresh signal and also developed a new touch input system that anticipates where your fingers will land and gives the CPU an extra shot of power when you touch the screen. Blah, blah, blah -- that's all geek speak. What matters is that Jelly Bean is like ICS, only noticeably smoother and faster.
Google officially took the wraps off of Android 4.1, Jelly Bean, at its Google I/O developers' conference this morning. The new OS will ship on the Nexus 7 tablet also announced this week; it's scheduled to roll out to the Galaxy Nexus and Motorola Xoom in July (though upgrades for the Verizon versions of those devices, as you'd expect, will likely take longer due to Verizon's involvement). The Nexus S is also confimed to get the Jelly Bean upgrade at some point in the near future.
I've been spending the afternoon using Jelly Bean on both the Nexus 7 tablet and a GSM Galaxy Nexus phone. Here are my first impressions:
Android 4.1 is a refinement -- not a ground-shifting upgrade.
That said, Android 4.1 is certainly not insignificant. It has some powerful performance enhancements and some sweet new features, too.
Android 4.1's performance improvements are definitely noticeable.
Google calls its Jelly Bean performance push "Project Butter" because it's meant to make everything run more smoothly than ever. Based on the time I've spent testing Android 4.1 so far, the buttery name is well earned.
So what's "Project Butter" all about? Take a deep breath: Google improved the system frame-rate and display refresh signal and also developed a new touch input system that anticipates where your fingers will land and gives the CPU an extra shot of power when you touch the screen. Blah, blah, blah -- that's all geek speak. What matters is that Jelly Bean is like ICS, only noticeably smoother and faster.
.jpg)
.jpg)
.jpg)
.jpg)
