Android 4.2 First Impressions

This week  I updated my Nexus 7 and Gnex to 4.2 to try out the new version of Android, 4.2. One of the most notable new features is the lockscreen customization which jumps out as soon as you boot up with somewhat annoying flashes of white to indicate that left/right swipes enable multiple pages of apps. I never fully understood the need for lockscreen apps, I prefer to just jump into the OS undistracted and get to full versions of the apps. The ability to customize the clock is welcome at least, especially as the new default has odd styling that I'm not a fan of.

The clock app itself has been rebuilt with some strange design choices. For setting the time, you now need to type in the digits instead of scrolling, which makes it impossible to add an extra 10 minutes or so without retyping the whole thing. The alarm also requires dragging to deactivate or snooze, which is a bit too much to think about at 7am in the morning.

The notification bar flicks between two modes for access to quick settings, a nice idea in theory, but it misses some of my most used settings such as GPS, wifi hotspots and daa usage. Without these I'd prefer to have just kept the one-click button for going into the full Settings menu. I'm also not too sure about the Nexus 7 having the notification and settings menus on separate sides as I often swipe down the wrong one.

The camera app has been re-hauled with a simpler, circle-based style that I like quite a lot. One of the most highlighted features of 4.2 is Photospheres, which is effectively just two-way panoramas, but the results are very cool and probably the most fun thing to play about in this update.

Swype has always been my very favourite thing about Android so I was pleased to see Gesture Typing added as a feature of the stock keyboard. This stock version works nearly as well as Swype, getting it right more often than other 3rd party options I've tried. I prefer the key layout here, especially in the UK where £ gets prominence over $ unlike Swype. With a couple of improvements this could be the perfect keyboard.

Performance-wise there's no significant leap like Jelly Bean, but clear improvements in some areas. Google Now is probably the most notable leap, with swipes from the Home buttons activating it almost immediately.

New features aside the core OS hasn't changed around much, there's a few niceties such as being able to double tap apps on the Intents picker and the current app sliding into the app switcher, but it's clear why this version didn't merit a major version jump to K. Whereas ICS and Jelly Bean left me wondering how Android could possibly improve, 4.2 leaves me more excited about what could be coming next.