Android 4.1 Jelly Bean coming mid-July, optimized with Project Butter

[Shawn Knight]

Google has unveiled the successor to Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich at their annual Google I/O Conference. Android 4.1 Jelly Bean arrives just eight months after ICS was released despite the fact that a large number of Android devices still haven’t received the 4.0 update.

Engadget was on hand for the event, noting that Jelly Bean isn’t as big of a revolutionary step as moving from Gingerbread to ICS, but there are some pretty significant changes that Android users can look forward to. The most important of these is Project Butter, an initiative to improve the overall speed and performance of the mobile operating system.

Jelly Bean with Project Butter makes the entire user interface fast and fluid. The system uses triple buffering in the graphics pipeline to maintain consistent frame rates, according to The Verge. Furthermore, the CPU will ramp up to full power the instant a touch command is detected to avoid lag that typically occurs when a processor is in low power mode.

Two Galaxy Nexus handsets were compared side-by-side, one running Ice Cream Sandwich with Jelly Bean on the other. The latter offered significantly higher frame rates when cruising through the UI. This is because Jelly Bean operates at 60 frames per second system-wide.

Other new features include Offline Voice Typing which no longer requires an Internet connection and Google Now integration. Google Now can accomplish a number of tasks such as keeping you up to date with your favorite sports team, learning the route you take to work and checking on the status of traffic as well as providing information about public transit whenever you are close to a terminal. There’s also a new keyboard that uses SwiftKey-like prediction to speed up typing.

Google will make Jelly Bean available for the Motorola Xoom, Galaxy Nexus and Nexus S in mid-July. No word yet on when the OS will reach other Android handsets.

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https://www.techspot.com/news/49173-android-41-jelly-bean-coming-mid-july-optimized-with-project-butter.html

 

[Raswan]

"Furthermore, the CPU will ramp up to full power the instant a touch command is detected to avoid lag that typically occurs when a processor is in low power mode."

Translation: expect even worse battery life unless you shell out for one of the 2800mAh beasts.

 

[Rippleman]

[FONT=Helvetica]"Jelly Bean with Project Butter makes the entire user interface fast and fluid"[/FONT]

[FONT=Helvetica]Wasn't it already fast and fluid? pretty sure[/FONT][FONT=Helvetica] I heard from all the android fan-boys saying that...[/FONT]

 

[Kibaruk]

[FONT=Helvetica]"Jelly Bean with Project Butter makes the entire user interface fast and fluid"[/FONT]

[FONT=Helvetica]Wasn't it already fast and fluid? pretty sure[/FONT][FONT=Helvetica] I heard from all the android fan-boys saying that...[/FONT]

It has actually been like that all along, even on my old optimus one =)

 

[Chazz]

No, there is definitely lag on Android devices when compared to iOS and Windows Phone. I'm very happy that Google is deciding to fix this instead of being in denial like their fans. I always felt that Google had some pretty brilliant engineers, and the programming done in Android just showed me otherwise. I look forward to this fix, and perhaps and Android device would be my next one if they do it well.

 

[MilwaukeeMike]

So Android finally gets perfectly smooth scrolling and maybe someday iPhones will have widgets and turn-by-turn navigation. who cares. The real problem here is that it's called Jelly Bean. Does that remind anyone of those iMacs back in like 1990 when bright neon colors were cool?

Intel names their processors after pretentious sounding hunting clubs and Google thinks they're marketing to tweens. At least Apple understands that it's numbers and letters make sense to people. Except for that iPad 3, which is just the 'new ipad' until the next new ipad. That'll be the newer ipad.

 

[Guest]

customs roms all the way

 

[customcarvin]

Hell ya! I hope AOKP will support the Fascinate with this release of Android. I have a strong feeling they will because the Nexus S is a beefed up Galaxy S variant. That means that if Google is supporting the Nexus S with this release, chances are, fassy ROMs will be available!

As long as I am able to upgrade my OS, and it operates well, I'm not going to get a new phone.

 

[Wagan8r]

I'm looking forward to this, but it's actually pretty sad that it took all the way up to version 4.1 for them to make the OS smooth. It kind of makes sense since they bought the OS after it was well into development, but with a company the size of Google, there's no excuse to let it out the door like that.

Each version of iOS was built for a single device, so it always runs smoothly... if you happen to own the latest device. If you own an earlier device, you get screwed with a performance crippling OS update, or you get a hacked down update where the version is a lie.

Windows Phone was built from scratch to perform well on low-end devices. The thought of needing a "Project Butter" is *****ic as they already did that; it was called WP 7.0. Each time I use another OS, the honeymoon wears off pretty quickly. Not to say that I dislike them, but they just can't compare to WP.

- An iPhone, Android, and WP owner