All you want to know about Jelly Bean: Android 4.1 mobile operating system (OS)
The I/O Conference 2012 in San Francisco this year has been very-very special because of the expectations about the announcement of the new and improved Android OS that Google has termed as ‘Jelly Bean.’ It was unveiled by Hugo Barra, the director of product management at Google during the developers’ conference. The expectations turned into reality as Google has now finally announced it during the conference. This would be an update to the latest existing Android OS ICS that is already running Nexus phones and tablets.
This is an incremental update to the existing OS with many advanced features that have been added with the version. However, you will not see any major revamp in the OS yet it is very competitive and carries many attractive features. A close analysis of the OS suggest that at many points it is very close to the Apple iOS 6, the latest mobile operating system from Apple.
Google has responded to the challenge posed by the Apple’s voice navigation system, Siri by introducing a similar voice transcription and search utility with this latest Android version. You will find the camera apps more advanced as it has been streamlined with ‘swipe to review’ feature.
To let you know more about the new Android 4.0, its top five features are described below:
Unify Messaging
Apps have been improved to work better for Android users. Jelly Bean offers unified messaging app that is developed after incorporating various features of many apps. So far Google has offered a text messaging that is different from ‘Talk’. It is a separate app provided for chatting over Google Talk. Little beyond this you find another separate app ‘Messenger’ that is meant for sending notes to the users or contacts of social network Google+. Presently, three different apps have been assigned to do almost similar kind of task thus Android this time has integrated all these apps into one to make things simple for the Android users.
The developers take a cue from Apple’s Playbook and decided to offer one single app and designed it to perform all kinds of messaging, be it text, e-mail messaging or chat. It is very similar to the iMessage app you find in Apple’s iOS in which all three services are provided in the single app.
Google Now
Google Now is also a unifying service that is enabled through search cards appearing on the home screen of the device. You get the list of cards by swiping up on the screen of the device. These cards are to make the life of Android user easy and help them plan their schedule. For example, it can tell how much time it will take to reach their office. If you are planning to board a flight then this app can let you know how much time you are left when you need to rush to the airport. Apart from this using these cards you get results to many other queries in a more visual way. The interesting thing about this app is that it is integrated with the Voice Search feature offered by Android.
These cards help you know the answers of questions like “What is diameter of the Earth,” and help you know about weather, traffic and image search etc.
Improved Notifications
Google has maintained an upper hand over Apple when it comes to Notification. With the new Jelly Bean it has just got better. You would be able to perform actions from the drop down notifications menu instead of opening a new app. This is going to make things easier for Android users as in case of a missed call. You can call back or message the caller using the Notification widget. It makes things easy for you, if you are ‘liking’ or commenting on ‘Foursqure check ins’ social networking websites. This all will be managed at one go with the Notifications menu.
Moreover, you will be able to read the Gmail messages right from the Notifications tab in the drop down menu. It relieves users from switching between various apps to do the same things. What is most interesting about it is the users can expand the notifications using the multi-touch feature of the device. Each notification can be expanded by using the two finger downward swipe.
Apart from the mentioned above, this latest Android version promises a lot more other features like improved keyboard, Android beam, camera apps and more. The features incorporated in this ICS upgrade seem to get closer to Apple iO6 OS that is going to make it tough for the consumers to make a choice between the two.