We mentioned Jelly Bean enough in the last few months (including the Google I/O day 1 coverage) that the anticipation of it coming to someone' Nexus was building day by day especially after the announcement that we received of Jelly Bean OTA starting up. And we finally have it on our Nexus(es) and so we bring to you the much awaited hands on experience as we tried it out on our android devices. The OTA started around a week back with the official announcement from the Nexus stream on Google plus.
Its fast!! No doubt on that. Google and Android Development team seems to have done a far better job on this version as compared to the last ones. Project Butter is for now living up to its expectations and is delivering what was promised at the I/O. A fast, fluid and smooth experience that makes switching from one app to another a very beautiful experience, much thanks to the new animations that the team has provided with as you change the apps on the device or even withing the apps themselves. Triple buffering and vsync helps in smoother and more consistent rendering through the system. CPU gets a boost as soon as you start to touch the device and when not in use tries to saves battery.
We saw some improvements with ICS, but this time its much more to comfort the user experience. Bigger and smoother notifications.
Actions are now directly available from within the notification shade.
Grouping by applications with the first item expanded.
Pinch notifications to expand or collapse them.
Image preview is available after you capture a screen (power button and low volume at same time) and you can share the screen capture right from here!
Don't recognize the app that generated the notification? Touch and hold the notification to see app details.
The camera app received some nice animations and a couple very useful features.
Swipe to view the recent pics taken without having to leave the camera app.
Pinch the photos in Gallery mode to create a filmstrip mode to view the photos.
While in filmstrip mode swipe up n down to delete the photos and undo a delete in a touch.
New animation as you take a photo, Paging animation
Try switching your camera (front and back) ;)
Gallery animation while selecting a photo to view from an album.
Who said iGoogle is dying? Google Now provides a personalized experience to you once you are done configuring it. The data will be available to you via Google Cards and with time they get smarter to appear as and when you need them.
Weather card to show off the weather of your current location
Traffic card to get the traffic conditions and possible alternate routes
Flight card to get the flight details
Sports card to get details on your favorite sports action
Translation card when you need to translate words while in a different region
Currency card for checking local currency conversion rates and etc..
Sir Alternate : Google Search (or Voice Search)
We had our troubles with Siri and we are not against it. But having said that, Google seems to be taking the voice assistant from Apple a bit too seriously we think. They have a long way to go still but this really seems to be a start. When we tried Siri sometime back the accent was a real problem. Google' voice search seems to be picking us pretty smartly and presenting results in a very useful manner and reading out as well sometimes.
Uses Knowledge graph to make sure you get results pertinent to your needs and precise ones as well, a much richer experience.
Available from the locked screen by swiping upwards and otherwise by swping up fromo the taskbar/system bar.
While in Google Search (normal one) say 'Google' to activate the Voice search.
For some queries, like the one we did for The President, you may hear a spoken answer.
Much smooth and fast experince.
Feature to work better on weak network areas.
Jelly Bean introduces conversational text to speech voice in US english for both network and embedded engines. The speech recognizer lets you type your mails and messages using voice and although Google says it works even when there is no internet connection, we found otherwise!!
Calendar Gets Animations and Colors and Notifications too!
Its more buttery now with content fade and other animations on paging between days
Event colors are displayed if they were marked with one while creation.
Notifications show more details and with one touch you may snooze the event or mail all guests without going to the app
Emailing guests with either default messages like "Be there in 10 min" or your own custom ones.
Any setting son options that you do are now remembered by the Calendar app so you don't fret over the settings again an again.
The main settings now shows all the accounts that you have configured and are signed in on your device.
Internationalization and Keyboard
Jelly bean adds support for bidirectional text and adds more languages including Persian, Thai and Hindi with more Indic languages like Kannada, Telugu added.
Japanese specific version of glyphs are now properly rendered while using the language
Platform' dictionary gets more accurate and relevant
Over time predictions, corrections get better.
Language switch is easy and one touch
Keymaps for QWERTY, QWERTZ, AZERTY, Dvorak, Colemak and PC styles are avialable.
Input style switch with hotkeys is now available as well.
Messaging
MMS snaps show right thee in notifications
Recipients suggestions are improved as you compose a message and start tying sender' name
Msg delivered reports now sport the contacts name as well.
Did you receive the OTA on yours or are you on the manual install? Share with us on your experiences about this new version, which seems will have an important part to play considering the issues that were raised with the previous version; ICS!
The First Impression
New Notification Bar
Actions are now directly available from within the notification shade.
Grouping by applications with the first item expanded.
Pinch notifications to expand or collapse them.
Image preview is available after you capture a screen (power button and low volume at same time) and you can share the screen capture right from here!
Don't recognize the app that generated the notification? Touch and hold the notification to see app details.
New Camera App and Gallery View
Swipe to view the recent pics taken without having to leave the camera app.
Pinch the photos in Gallery mode to create a filmstrip mode to view the photos.
While in filmstrip mode swipe up n down to delete the photos and undo a delete in a touch.
New animation as you take a photo, Paging animation
Try switching your camera (front and back) ;)
Gallery animation while selecting a photo to view from an album.
Google Now
Weather card to show off the weather of your current location
Traffic card to get the traffic conditions and possible alternate routes
Flight card to get the flight details
Sports card to get details on your favorite sports action
Translation card when you need to translate words while in a different region
Currency card for checking local currency conversion rates and etc..
Sir Alternate : Google Search (or Voice Search)
Uses Knowledge graph to make sure you get results pertinent to your needs and precise ones as well, a much richer experience.
Available from the locked screen by swiping upwards and otherwise by swping up fromo the taskbar/system bar.
While in Google Search (normal one) say 'Google' to activate the Voice search.
For some queries, like the one we did for The President, you may hear a spoken answer.
Much smooth and fast experince.
Feature to work better on weak network areas.
Text To Speech and Voice Typing
Calendar Gets Animations and Colors and Notifications too!
Its more buttery now with content fade and other animations on paging between days
Event colors are displayed if they were marked with one while creation.
Notifications show more details and with one touch you may snooze the event or mail all guests without going to the app
Emailing guests with either default messages like "Be there in 10 min" or your own custom ones.
Any setting son options that you do are now remembered by the Calendar app so you don't fret over the settings again an again.
Settings Got Accounts
Internationalization and Keyboard
Jelly bean adds support for bidirectional text and adds more languages including Persian, Thai and Hindi with more Indic languages like Kannada, Telugu added.
Japanese specific version of glyphs are now properly rendered while using the language
Platform' dictionary gets more accurate and relevant
Over time predictions, corrections get better.
Language switch is easy and one touch
Keymaps for QWERTY, QWERTZ, AZERTY, Dvorak, Colemak and PC styles are avialable.
Input style switch with hotkeys is now available as well.
Messaging
MMS snaps show right thee in notifications
Recipients suggestions are improved as you compose a message and start tying sender' name
Msg delivered reports now sport the contacts name as well.
Did you receive the OTA on yours or are you on the manual install? Share with us on your experiences about this new version, which seems will have an important part to play considering the issues that were raised with the previous version; ICS!
Post Credit:
One of our regular readers and the one who suggested this topic first, Milind is a software engineer by profession and is himself a blogger. You may follow his life events on his blog All in a day
Connect with him either on Facebook or on ApnaCircle for his professional life.
One of our regular readers and the one who suggested this topic first, Milind is a software engineer by profession and is himself a blogger. You may follow his life events on his blog All in a day
Connect with him either on Facebook or on ApnaCircle for his professional life.
how did you set the wallpaper for the lockscreen as a live wallpaper?
ReplyDelete