Android 4.1 Jelly Bean Review!

Hey people! It took awhile for stable versions of Android 4.1 Jelly Bean to drop for my phone, but after testing for a week to let the OS settle, I can give you a review from my personal experiences with this version. (For more information on Android versions, please refer to this post: http://androidenlightenment.blogspot.com/2012/05/android-versions-and-you.html )

As you guys should know by now, with the numbering conventions of Android, changes in the first decimal usually mark minor changes/updates/tweaks instead of huge overhauls. Android 4.1 Jelly Bean offers these improvements over 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich (courtesy of wikipedia):


Smoother user interface by:
- Vsync timing across all drawing and animation done by the Android framework, including application
   rendering, touch events, screen composition and display refresh
- Triple buffering in the graphics pipeline
- Enhanced accessibility
- Bi-directional text and other language support
- User-installable keyboard maps
- Expandable notifications
- Ability to turn off notifications on an app specific basis
- Shortcuts and widgets can automatically be re-arranged or re-sized to allow new items to fit on home
  screens
- Bluetooth data transfer for Android Beam
- Offline voice dictation
- New interface layout for tablets with smaller screens (closer resembling that of a phone)
- Improved voice search
- Improved camera app
- Google Wallet (for the Nexus 7)
- Google Now
- Multichannel audio
- USB audio (for external sound DAC)
- Audio chaining (also known as gapless playback)

The ROM i'm using to test Jelly Bean is CM10 for the E4GT http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1810315 (Fortunately the bugs don't interfere with the features or experience toooo much)

Feature Review

1. Buttery Smoothness!

The most noticeable feature that Jelly Bean brings is its buttery smoothness. No matter what phone you have or how fast of a processor there is, the Android OS' hasn't been as smooth as iOS on iPhones. Some phones get closer than others, and some android versions get closer than others, but Jelly Bean has finally caught up, and arguably surpassed, the iPhone in regards to buttery smoothness.

2. Google Now!

Google Now offers a completely new searching experience for Android devices. It updates various cards based off of the events you have scheduled in your phone and the things you search for. Some examples of cards are: Weather, Sports, Flights, and Locations. These cards will provide detailed information in regards to their respective topics and how they relate to you, and will update on their own. 

3. Expandable Notifications!

With the notifications you get in the drop down bar, if there are multiples or more information on them, you can expand them to get a better preview of what all exist within the notification. So for example if you have 100 emails, you can expand that particular notification to catch a glimpse of who some of the emails are from and what their subject is.

4. Easier Widget Placement!

This new feature allows the widget you're trying to place to move other icons around when trying to put it on your screen. In previous versions, if you tried to place a widget and there were icons in the way, even if you had enough space on the screen, the widget would not place. This feature just makes your life a little easier during widget placement.

5. New Camera App and Gallery!

The new camera app and gallery creates sort of a film strip effect when you take pictures. So after you take a picture, the phone will push the picture to the right in film strip fashion. Also when reviewing pictures, you can swipe up or down to delete a picture if you don't want it (similar to notifications). 

These were the most noteworthy features to me, outside of additional CM settings (only offered for Root Users). So if rooted, I highly recommend checking out Jelly Bean!