Android 4.1 Jelly Bean review Only eight months have passed since I took a shufti at Ice Cream Sandwich, back then it was the new version 4.0 of the Android operating system for mobile devices. A few days ago, my Asus Google Nexus 7 tablet landed on the doormat. It's preinstalled with Jelly Bean, the ICS replacement and lends itself to poking with the …
My HTC Incredible had the life force and the battery charge sucked out of it by the ICS update. I deeply regret doing it. If anybody is running Gingerbread on an HTC Incredible, I advise that you do not 'update' it. Apart from the sluggishness and the increased battery drain, you'll have to get used to some UI changes that are simply annoying.
Question: Did you back up and do a factory reset on the HTC after the upgrade?
I know that my Droid razr was acting squirrelly until I did so - battery usage is now better than Gingerbread and some other little issues (email quit etc) did straighten out.
Not sure that this might help, but throwing it out there in any case.
The stop cheapskating on your product purchases.
If you want the Apple-like update experience, the ONLY way to achieve that is via a network agnostic Nexus device.
Anything else, you are at the mercy of the phone manufacturers and networks. You might want to consider that when you cheapskate on your phone purchase next time. Put up or shut up as they say....
And the iPhone, iPhone 2 and iPhone 3 aren't supported by new versions of iOS either, your point?
With Nexus, as long as the hardware is up to the job, you will get the updates. If the new version requires additional memory or extra hardware that aren't in the old device, there isn't a lot anybody can do about it.
If you buy a carrier phone, you get the updates as and when the carrier sees fit, if at all. I went halfway, I bought a carrier free non-Nexus phone... I'll probably go for a Nexus the next time around. That said, htc have sent me 4 Android updates and over half a dozen firmware updates since I bought my Sensation last Autumn.
"Anything else, you are at the mercy of the phone manufacturers and networks. You might want to consider that when you cheapskate on your phone purchase next time. Put up or shut up as they say...."
Hi Barry. Nexus devices are rarely cutting edge - they seem more like a reference design for developers, or even for other manufacturers. They often lack some features that other, more expensive, Android smart phones have. People who buy a mid/high-end HTC, Samsung, or Sony phone are hardly 'cheapskates'.
Is it cheapskating? some think that the Google UI is dull and the OEM versions are better. They have to offer something to get people onto their platform.
Personally I think these vendors need to contribute back to Android and stop being so petty. Can you imagine the mess Linux would be in if big companies like IBM didn't contribute their work back to the kernel?
Now that is seriously useful. Its not everyone who is particularly comfortable with a virtual keyboard for more than a couple of sentences. Many are of course (I am myself) but there plenty who aren't and I have no doubt that they will welcome this aspect. Apart from anything else there are many people who, for reasons of age and/or infirmity rather than preference, find using an on-screen keyboard very difficult indeed.
Trying to recreate a physical keyboard on a touchscreen will never work properly so all touchscreen keyboards of that type are a bit rubbish. I've recently switched over to using Swype which is a far better way to type on a touchscreen and surprisingly accurate. If you haven't tried it then it's well worth a go.
I tried all the keyboards around a year or so back and found Swype worked out a lot slower than Swiftkey for me- the super-predictive approach finds words after far less work and if you have to send the same message twice it's faster than copying/pasteing. Pretty neat technology.
I remember Swype seeming very novel and clever a few years ago. However, I realised that I can get much higher speed and better accuracy with a properly trained Swiftkey; I have the phone and the tablet version now, and given that I got that 15 quid store credit with my Nexus 7, didn't resent having to spring for three quid for the separate tablet edition :D
That said, I did try another beta of Swype recently, it's still not bad, but the novelty has worn off a wee bit.
" Nevertheless, the update delivers increased performance and new features in spades"
Not wanting to be picky, but you just reviewed this on new (quad-core) hardware, can you justify the "increased performance" part of this statement? How much of the experiance is based on being able to dedicate a core to UI handling without impact on other tasks (not sure if it does that, purely an example of what it might do).
For most people I suspect they wont care as they'll get this with new hardware - but for a review on this site that does seem to be a major unsubstantiated claim.
My Tegra 3 based Android 4.1 Nexus 7 seems quicker and smoother than my 4.0 Galaxy S3, if that's any help. Admittedly, there is the extra factor of manufacturer crapware to take into account, they all like to install their own graphical shell- but Samsung Touchwiz is significantly lighter and less spammy than HTC Sense and friends.
So, apply a Stradivari constant to account for Touchwiz, and it still seems sleeker. The vsynced and triple buffered UI is lovely, and I suspect the CPU freq management helps here too, as the S3 sometimes takes a second or so to fully light the afterburners if it has been dozing.
The Nexus 7 with Jelly Bean is the slickest Android experience so far, easily. You're absolutely right, the hardware is sufficiently powerful that it damn well should be, but still, that hasn't always been a guarantee in the past. Personally, I give the Nexus 7 a cheery and unreserved thumbs up, it doesn't look at all shabby next to my iPad 3 (yes, ok, I like gadgets).
(Also, pretty much everyone who has played with my N7 so far has been sorely tempted, a few are gnashing their teeth that the 16GB one is out of stock now :D)
Oh, and Firefox Aurora with Adblock Plus is a joy on there...
After what seemed like an eternity waiting for ICS, I received my Jelly Bean update OTA last night on my Nexus S.
I was already used to it as my Nexus 7 came pre installed with it - at least - it probably did. SWMBO swiped it and I've barely seen it since, and as I haven't been bombarded with "How" and "it's rubbish because" and "stupid thing" and "why doesn't it" etc, I can only assume that Jelly Bean functions well.
"ability to understand natural language and reply in the same is certainly on a par with Siri"
So shite if you've got a northern English or Scottish accent then? We tried out Siri on a colleagues iPhone recently and it could not understand anyone in the IT dept despite none of us having a particularly strong accent.
Voice recognition does not work unless you spend weeks training the software to understand you personally by reading standard texts to it.
I can't wait for my first sighting of a VoiceTyping moron walking into a lamppost.
I have seen several TXTing morons walk into lampposts/busstops/letterboxes and on one occasion the doofus in question walked into the road and got run over (he was OK but his phone got trashed).
They will be speaking to their phone/tablet whilst checking that it is typing what they said,..... and WHAMMO!
I'll be lying in a corner laughing hysterically.
Better still you can do Driveby Tourettes.
Just run up to someone VOXing and shout a stream of obscenities at their Phone/Tablet.
Then watch them frantically trying to delete your commentary from their next Tweet.
Oh, it's gonna be SUCH FUN!
I don't suppose all this swirly swishy boingy slidy UI guff is capable of being disabled by any chance? I do this on all My Windows boxes as it's just a waste of CPU cycles AND seconds waiting for pages and panels to 'slurp' around the screen! Imagine how frikkin' fast Android phones (and iPhones?!) would perform if you could...
Like to try this great video guide on that JB phone??? I'd love to know how well it plays.... :)
http://go.theregister.com/k/samsung_hdd_YT_vid
Even a good site famous for its video reviews of stuff, still has not replied....
http://forum.dailymobile.net/index.php?topic=77172.0
Ah sure wonder why..... :P
err....both those videos are hosted on YouTube so they play perfectly on the Nexus 7
You probably didn't get a reply because it's a dumb question to begin with! We all know Adobe has pulled support for Flash from Android and that's its days are numbered. Nothing to see here, move along.
NOT if the reviewer had actually shown this!!!
go tell them to say, "yes, youtube works, as well as others... " because NO-ONE has said any thing like this, not even casually on the browser review!!!!!
now go on, be of **public service** and try these on your nexus... :) then I can tell all my friends they are stupid, video DOES work on JB, so go and get it!!!! :)
http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xoxej9_android-jelly-bean-what-we-want-to-see_tech
http://www.techradar.com/reviews/pc-mac/software/operating-systems/android-4-1-jelly-bean-1087230/review/page:2
The battery meter is this...
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=net.hubalek.android.reborn.beta&feature=search_result#?t=W251bGwsMSwyLDEsIm5ldC5odWJhbGVrLmFuZHJvaWQucmVib3JuLmJldGEiXQ..
and the WiFi widget is this....
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.kman.WifiManager&feature=search_result#?t=W251bGwsMSwxLDEsIm9yZy5rbWFuLldpZmlNYW5hZ2VyIl0.
I heartily recommend both.
How about fixing what happens when the phone loses cellular signal?
Right now, when the phone loses cellular signal, rather than shutting down the cellular radio for a period of time (like a minute or more), and then re-activating, looking for signal, and repeating as appropriate, the phone goes into the Yorkie separation-anxiety moment of "OMG NO SIGNAL NO SIGNAL HELLO TOWER HELLO TOWER OMG NO SIGNAL NO SIGNAL TOWER TOWER CAN YOU HEAR ME OMG" and burns the battery down to nothing in no time.
True, some of that behavior is in the radio system firmware, which is outside the Android framework - but Android can see the RSSI value, Android controls the power to the radio system, Android can say "OK, take a breath cellular system. We have no signal, the odds of that being fixed in the next 2 milliseconds is pretty low, chill and we'll check in a minute, OK? - Breath!"
this is in the 'it always works, dunnit??' class... the same as PC wifi... blissfully happy, until it all goes wrong.. another good use of android, to see whether some nutter has kicked the router, or messed up the PC...
yes, they managed to crash IE, and instead of phoning support, went all though the network settings, instead of restarting... :(
... who's disappointed that the British English "Siri" voice wasn't based on Peter Tuddenham's?
I've had mixed results with Siri. British English has a far greater variation in accents and dialects than is found in the US, so I suspect we'll see "Scottish English", "Welsh English", "Geordie English", etc. eventually. (Irish English accents might be covered by US English though; the Irish influence on most of the east coast American accents is very noticeable.)
"I've had mixed results with Siri. British English has a far greater variation in accents and dialects than is found in the US"
Boggle.
You'd not been to:
the South
Wisconsin, donchanow
Texas
like, California, fur shur
San Francisco (they have their own accent)
Any Barrio area
(just for starters)
Yes, US TV would have you believe we all talk like Kansans, but seriously, we have as many incomprehensible accents as the UK does.
Still can't get google to respond to "What's the weather like" in anything other than the antequated American Fahrenheit scale, despite setting all things to English (UK). I have to specifically ask for the temperature in celsius to get a proper British response.
And asking and talking about the weather is a bloody British pass time!
Bit rubbish and really quite annoying.
Question, I'm about to take delivery of the nexus 7 and I want to mirror the screen to my telly (by one of those old fashioned wire things if needs be) I know there is no HDMI out socket but is there any other way of doing it (even if I have to crack the beast open and roll my own connector) ?
see my post in answer to AC 24th July 2012 13:21 ... who may just be lazy, or found the links dont work... :/
please try them, all the reviewers wont bother! It will be a few months until JB is out for 'old' handsets anyway.... :( :(
meanwhile, if you are a newb like me, and dont want to 'root' - then 'astro filemanager' gives you an easy way to back up your apps.. :)
Hi illiad, sorry for the late reply.
JB ships with Chrome as the default browser so playing Flash video in the browser a non starter. Also the Flash player won't download onto the Nexus 7 from the Play Store. I have heard tell that if you root your Nexus 7, side load Flash player and use a third party browser you can play Flash video in-browser. I've not tried this so can't comment.
The YouTube app works as it does in previous versions of Android and HTML video plays in Chrome. All the video links you posted either played in Chrome or launched the YouTube app.
I didn't cover this in the article as I didn't consider it part of the story of what's changed from ICS to JB though I should perhaps have mentioned that Chrome has now replaced the old webkit browser as the default.
Hope this clarifies matters.
Great to hear from someone with brains (seriously)!! :)
Thats very interesting about those links... I guess it is too early to see what will happen, but there is some recent chatter about getting something working, beyond saying 'its wonderful' etc..
As I said elsewhere, we'll have to wait until after aug 15, to see what happens, and how many devices are nearly or fully bricked by desperate geeks, and how many just 'work'.. :P
thats the thing that gets me steamed, peeps talking about stuff before it is even 'put in the oven', never mind baked...
I think the worst example was the rip of the new 'hulk' movie in 2000, that was so bad, it was most likely copied straight from the studio's editing suite, unfinished!!!
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