Jelly Bean Impressions

Google's newest version of Android, 4.1 "Jelly Bean", rolled out to my Galaxy Nexus earlier this week. Never one to let a major Android update go un-blogged, here are my opinions so far.

The best thing here is how much faster everything feels than in ICS. The so-called 'Project Butter' is much more than just a performance tweak, there's a lot of new transitions such as slide-ins when opening apps and jumping from the camera to photos. The overall experience on the Nexus is smoother than any other phone I've tried, including more powerful devices like the One X or S3.


The UI looks similar to ICS, the only thing that really jumps out is the richer notifications, which adds handy shortcuts to save a few seconds here and there. Other changes are less obvious but just as welcome, like the way homescreen icons and widgets intelligently re-arrange themselves when you drag them about.


The big new feature is Google Now, which works with a much-improved voice search to offer a personal assistant of sorts. It's fun to play about with but personally I still don't find it quite accurate or robust enough to use on a regular basis (though still a step up from the likes of Siri and S-Voice). For example, it can provide directions to a local tube station, but didn't manage to understand a post code, which is what I usually enter into Maps. I don't doubt that AI is the way forward, but still has some way to go until it makes a reliable alternative to manually inputting commands.


Jelly Bean is probably the best .x update yet, with a performance upgrade that I wouldn't expect in a minor version jump. It'd be nice to see some improvements on the stock apps like messaging and the dialler, with most manufacturer skins and 3rd party apps improving on these areas. The core OS itself though has reached a level that feels close to perfection, I can't imagine where Google will take it next, but look forwards to seeing what they come up with.