Posts Tagged
jelly bean
In today’s This Week In Android installment, Connor pointed out that Android 4 — including ICS, Jelly Bean 4.1 and 4.2 — is now installed on more devices than Gingerbread, the previous king of Android versions.
It was bound to happen at one point, as more and more devices get released or updated with the new Android versions, and old devices stop being used. For example, I have 4 Android units, 2 of which are on ICS and 2 on Jelly Bean. There’s no more Gingerbread in my life.
But what about you? Please vote in the poll, and make sure you enter multiple selections if you have several devices.
From the release of the Nexus 7 in the summer to a whole line of Nexus products in the fall, Android has come a long way in the past year. Sadly, hurricane Sandy struck the USA’s East Cost right when Google wanted to proudly unveil their newest line-up, so their announcement was restricted to mass e-mails and an online launch.
Alongside the Nexus 7, Google launched the Nexus 10, a 10-inch NVIDIA Tegra 3 powered tablet, and the Nexus 4, a 4-inch smartphone with a 1.5 GHz quad-core Qualcomm Snapdragon processor. To support these devices, the company “refreshed” Android 4.1 Jelly Bean, giving it a version bump to 4.2, while retaining the Jelly Bean codename. Want to find out the improvements done? Read on.
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One of the most important reasons I decided to buy a Samsung Galaxy S3, instead of waiting for the new Nexus device, was that given the popularity of the Galaxy brand, there were bound to be hundreds of custom ROMs developed for it. See, if there was an AA group for customization addicts, I’d be standing there now and introducing myself, “Hello, my name is Rita and I’m an addict.”
For about 2 months after getting the S3, I gave Samsung the benefit of the doubt, restraining myself to their own ICS flavor. However, the delay in official Jelly Bean’s arrival on my device and the itch to try something new finally pushed me over the edge. So I set out searching for custom ROMs and I looked at CyanogenMod first, a long-time favorite. But it was either a choice between a stable ICS — isn’t that what I was running away from? — with CM9, or a nightly Jelly Bean with CM10 and many bugs still plaguing it.
Then I widened my horizons, downloaded about 10 different ROMs and ended up on FoxHound, a surprisingly awesome custom ROM that ticked so many boxes for me. Here are the reasons I fell in love with it and decided to use it as a daily driver.
It’s been three months now since Google and ASUS teamed up to produce the Nexus 7, a brilliant device for its surprisingly low price tag. I’ve had mine since release day and I haven’t put the tablet down. Taking it to work, school and constantly using it around the house, the Nexus 7 is a firm companion of mine.
However, with any new device the first wave of orders isn’t going to be perfect. We’ve had problems with the screen creaking, problems with dead pixels and a variety of other things. Unfortunately, this can’t be fixed in an update, but a few other glitches and annoyances could. Android 4.1.2 was recently released for the Nexus 7, and this being the first system update since release, everyone was a bit excited.
I like to think that one of our big responsibilities here at AppStorm is to try out new methods of customizing and improving our phone experience, then translating the technical jargon of developers, and delivering to our readers a clear and concise method for that customization.
So, when I had been reading on the forums that a way had been worked out to add Google Now to a lot of ICS phones, I jumped right on it.
The CyanogenMod team have begun rolling out their Alpha-rated CM10 series of custom ROMs. These ROMs use Google’s latest ‘Jelly Bean’ build of Android, otherwise known as 4.1.
I’ve been running it on my Transformer TF101 this past week, and thoroughly enjoying it. Now I would like to highlight some features of the ROM, both from the Jelly Bean updates and CyanogenMod’s own additions.
Those of you with a Nexus device (or one of the few other phones and tablets with an official Jelly Bean update or unofficial ROM) have surely already tried out Google Now. What do you think of it?
I hate to say it, but I’m a little disappointed — it doesn’t feel ready yet. I was really interested to read Joe’s recent post outlining Google Now, as his experiences don’t match mine.
Part of the issue is that I’m in the UK. I had to fiddle around with the locality settings to switch from the old robot to the new voice in the first place, which was not a good start. And although Google Now understands my asking “When are the Cubs playing?”, showing me a card of the latest scores and giving me updates periodically from then on, it has no idea what I mean by “When is Manchester United playing?”, simply showing me a standard Google search result.
Okay, so it’s not international yet. That’s irritating, but understandable. Unfortunately, other little irritations exist, and they do add up. For instance, setting a reminder is useful, and I find myself doing it a lot: “In 15 minutes, remind me to take the vegetables out of the oven” successfully sets an alarm for fifteen minutes in the future, prompting me to “take the vegetables out of the oven.” Great! But these gradually fill up my stock Alarms list, so that it’s now full of odd times — and there’s no way to select several and delete them all. Plus, a request like “On Tuesday, remind me to do the recycling” brings up an error message, rather than setting an alarm, a calendar appointment, or a Google Task.
There are inconsistencies, too. Most voice actions are given as though talking to a person: “Remind me to X”, “What’s the weather like?”, “Navigate to X”. But “Play music” just loads the Google search results for [play music] (of which the first result is the Play Store listing for, yep, Play Music). To make the phone play music, I have to say, “Listen to music”. And even then it just loads a playlist of songs whose title contains the word “music”!
I could go on, but I won’t. I really like the idea of Google Now; I like the presentation, I like the concept – but it’s not ready yet. In time (and especially when other app developers build on top of it) I think it will be great. But for now, it’s just a novelty that’s more annoying that useful. Do you agree?
When Jelly Bean was officially announced, Android users had a lot to be excited about. The latest version of the OS is super-smooth (like Butter!), there are expandable notifications that actually include functionality, there is a better keyboard, better widgets, and a better camera/gallery.
The biggest announcements, of course, were the addition of a better voice search, and with it, Google Now. So what is Google Now? Let’s find out!
Early in 2012, Google released a set of design principles to aid developers in creating apps that complement the Ice Cream Sandwich user interface, also known as ‘Holo’. These guidelines aimed to allow for apps to ‘enchant’ and ‘amaze’ users, and simplify the user experience.
Now, while developers do not have to oblige Google and adhere to this aesthetic, many have embraced it with good results. This roundup highlights a few such applications worthy of your attention. Some you’ll know and probably already use, but there might be a few surprises too.
Thanks to Google letting developers download Jelly Bean onto their Galaxy Nexus phones at Google I/O last week, some ROMs are already available for you to flash right now, a couple of weeks before the official release. This Reddit thread contains some links if you want to try yourself; I’m going to give it a go later today.
Aside from Jelly Bean, the Nexus 7 will also be released later this month – well, in certain countries, at least. I’ve pre-ordered the 16GB model, and I’m really looking forward to it! How about you?
