The next major version of Android is here. Carrying the name Jelly Bean, Android 4.1 isn’t as huge a leap forward as Ice Cream Sandwich was but still brings plenty of new stuff to the table.
Firstly, Jelly Bean focuses on performance. More specifically, improving UI responsiveness. Google has dedicated a whole project codenamed Butter to improving Android performance.
Firstly, Jelly Bean focuses on performance. More specifically, improving UI responsiveness. Google has dedicated a whole project codenamed Butter to improving Android performance.
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.
Google showed two Galaxy Nexus smartphones, one running Ice Cream Sandwich and the other Jelly Bean and showed the huge difference that project butter makes. It's really quite impressive.
The keyboard typing is also improved, making it more predictive and adding more brains to the dictionary. On top of that, it’s made the Voice Typing work offline. On the demo it worked pretty well by fixing a misheard word (from Known to Though. Accessibility has also been improved adding new gestures and external support for Brail input.
Taking photos got more intuitive as well. Now, in Jelly Bean there's a neat animation when snapping a photo. With a swipe, you also get to the gallery showing you the latest photo you've taken. You can delete them by swiping them up or down.
The notification bar has also seen its fair share of changes. You can now hang up a phone call from the notification bar. It shows you a more prominent looking clock, as well as a lot of more powerful notifications from various apps like Music, Pulse and Gmail.
