Oh man, I'm behind on the times. Android 4.1, Jelly Bean, came out back in July and 4.2, also Jelly Bean, comes out this coming Tuesday. Well... I meant to do this before, but I am now.

Just as a preface, I am a long time Android fan. Started using Android back in 2010 with the HTC Hero and I've gotten 3 newer phones since then. Well back in August I shelled out $350 for an unlocked Galaxy Nexus straight from Google. My reasonings behind that is something I'll save for another time, but I primarily wanted to jump aboard the Nexus ship so I could get Android updates in a more timely manner and have access to more develop options, which includes rooting without voiding my warranty.



Android 4.1, which has the codename Jelly Bean, is the latest Android release that builds upon Android 4.0. The biggest change to the OS? Project Butter, and the feature's name suits it right. It also adds in some other really neat features that really innovates how you use your phone.

Project Butter

Project Butter brings something to Android that it has needed for a long time: A smooth UI. Ever since Android began and expanded, the UI has always been laggy (and this comes from experiencing the issue myself) no matter how good the hardware is. PB basically makes the UI smooth. It's hard to explain how well it works in text (or in pictures), so here's a video from PhoneDog on how well it does on a phone that's inferior to the best Android phone on the market.

Expandable Notifications

While Project Butter is an awesome thing to have, the biggest feature that really blows everything away is expandable notifications. Notifications on Android have always been a little bland and they didn't get better until ICS (Android 4.0) when you could actually interact with them. So how do the expandable notifications work? Two finger swipe down on a notification that supports it.

For example, the Google Play Music app has controls when you're not in the app. Expand the notification and you can get a larger album art and more controls.





It comes in handy if you really wanted to know the more practical use for it. Expanding your email notifications to see all of the more recent emails, expanding a missed call notification to call them or text them back, or even seeing who's checking in somewhere on Foursquare. It's a genius idea, really.

Google Now

Ruh-roh... Siri has an actual competitor and it does a great job of being a competitor. Google Now transforms Google's old search into a full fledged information system. Want to know the weather? Ask Google and it'll give you a card for the current and future weather. It'll even save the card for later so when you open up Google Now again it'll be right on the homepage. Want to know what score is for that football game you couldn't watch? Ask Google Now. It'll save that team for later and will alert you when they play again or what their score is in the future.









Things I Dislike

There's not a whole bunch I dislike about Jelly Bean, except for one tiny little problem that also carried over from Android 4.0. Android 2.3, Gingerbread, theme elements can still be seen throughout. Not through the main OS though, but rather in apps that haven't decided to update to the cleaner design standards. It's just ugly and I don't know why the Android team hasn't done anything about it.

Overview

As an Android fan, Jelly Bean does great justice to the OS, but most phones won't get it for a while. It's still taking Samsung, HTC, Motorola, and LG to actually update their phones to 4.1, and that's an issue that's plagued Android from the very beginning.

Android 4.2, which still carries the Jelly Bean codename, comes out next week on the new Nexus devices and it'll bring even more to the table. I'll see you then.