Google announced the next Android 4.1 Jelly Bean at Google I/O. The new version of Android comes with various exciting features. It’s claimed to be the fastest and smoothest version of Android yet
Most Exciting Features of Android 4.1 Jelly Bean
Notifications
The biggest change for the Android Jelly Bean would be the notifications drop down menu. Respond to your calls and emails directly from notifications menu. It enables you to text or call back directly from the notification widget. You can also perform foursquare check-ins and other social media activities. All you new Gmail messages are available within the notifications tab and you can expand each notification. The top notification shows various available actions. You can expand and rearrange any notification.
VSYNC Timing
Android 4.1 is optimized to deliver Android’s best performance and lowest touch latency, in an effortless, intuitive UI. Android 4.1 extends vsync timing across all drawing/animation done by the Android framework,
that ensures a consistent framerate. “Vsync (vertical synchronization), ensures monitor scan from the top of the picture at the right time.” Everything runs in lockstep (run the same set of operations at the same time in parallel) for a defined frame of 16 millisecond vsync heartbeat that ensures that no frame gets ahead or lags behind.
Triple Buffering
Android 4.1 includes triple buffering for graphics which enables more consistent graphics rendering that makes everything smoother like butter, operations include from scrolling to paging and animations. Project Butter uses fixed frame rate of 60 fps to create a fluid experience for user interface.
Bi-Directional Text and Other Language Support
Android 4.1 supports bi-directional text in TextView and EditText elements. Installed Apps can display text or perform text editing in left-to-right or right-to-left scripts such as, new Arabic and Hebrew fonts. Language support features include, additional Indic (Indian) languages (Kannada, Telugu, and Malayalam). Emoji characters from Unicode version 6.0. Glyph support for Japanese and Arabic. It includes vertical text support in WebViews, including Ruby Text and additional Vertical Text glyphs. Synthetic Bold glyphs are available for all fonts that don’t have dedicated bold glyphs.
User-installable Key Maps
Android 4.1 comes with user-installable keyboard maps for additional international keyboards and special layout types. By default, Android 4.1 includes and support 27 international keymaps for keyboards. As soon as user connect a keyboard, they can select one or more keymaps for the keyboard to use. It also provisions switching between keymaps while typing (ctrl-space).
Beautiful UI: Expandable Notifications
Android 4.1 brings a ton of major feature and API updates. The interface and the apps can now display larger, richer notifications that can be expanded or collapsed. Notifications enables new content support, including images and can include multiple actions in a row. Apps can create a larger area notifications (up to 256 dp:height), through the notification builder. Android 4.1 supports three templated notification styles. BigTextStyle (notification with a multiline TextView object), BigInboxStyle (notification the will screen all kind of lists such as messages, headlines etc.) and BigPictureStyle (notification for visual content). Besides, these default styles, users can now create their own notification styles using any remote View.
Camera & Higher-resolution contact photos
Jelly Bean 4.1 camera app lets users swipe the quick preview of the last photo instantly. The camera app features film strip UI for image gallery. Users can shrink the image gallery into a film strip for better image navigation. You cane easily and quickly swipe any picture from the film strip to delete it. In case of misstep, you can perform undo and get the image back.
Android 4.1 enables you to store high resolution contact photos (720 x 720). Apps can intelligently store and automatically retrieve contact photos at that size needed.
New Connectivity: NFC Support Android Beam
Android 4.1 enables you to share your contents just by touching two phones together. Yes, it supports NFC enabled Android Beam that lets users instantly share their contents. Just tap your phone to any other NFC-enabled Android Beam phone to share your contents.
Android 4.1, Android Beam can share contents by using Bluetooth for the data transfer mode. As soon as the user triggers a transfer operation, Android Beam changes it’s connectivity from NFC to Bluetooth to manage the transfer of the content.
Google Now
Google will provide each and every possible user task updates based on the user’s activity. It’s a system generated update based on user’s location, search history and personal setting and the preferences. Google Now is like your automated assistant.
