The next major upgrade to Android will be version 4.1 Jelly Bean, it has been announced at Google I/O today. Project Butter is the major new innovation in Android 4.1, focused on making the entire UI "fast, fluid and smooth." That includes triple buffering in the graphics pipeline, to ensure consistent frame rates with interface animations. Google's I/O demo showed two Galaxy Nexus devices side by side, one running Ice Cream Sandwich and the other on Jelly Bean, with the latter offering a significantly higher frame rate when navigating the Android UI.
Project Butter:
Firstly, Jelly Bean focuses on performance. More specifically, improving UI responsiveness. Google has dedicated a whole project codenamed Butter to improving Android performance.
By making the vsync of the screen at a constant 60 frames per second, it makes the UI smooth as, you've guessed it, butter. It even goes as far as to anticipating where your finger is and start drawing from that point to make the UI appear even smoother.
Google showed two Galaxy Nexus smartphones, one running Ice Cream Sandwich and the other Jelly Bean to demonstrate the huge difference that Project Butter makes. It's really quite impressive.
Google Now is a big addition from the Android team, introducing a sort of self-aware quality to Android phones — automatically updating you on your favorite sports teams in real time, learning your commute route and checking traffic, and also providing public transit information when it senses you're close to a transport station. It seems to be a sort of personal assistant functionality, mixing in local location data for things like restaurants and trying to proactively anticipate the things that you'll want to search for before you.Keyboard and voice input
The keyboard typing is also improved, with better and more accurate predictive input and extended dictionary.
On top of that, Voice Typing in now available offline. This means that it no longer requires data connection to work and its performance won't be affected by its slow speed.
Camera
Taking photos got more intuitive as well. Jelly Bean brings new UI and gestures, so you can swipe sideways to access the gallery (yes, just like on the WP smartphones). You can then quickly delete images by swiping them off the screen.
Notifications
The notification bar has also seen its fair share of changes. It shows you a more prominent looking clock and allows notifications from various apps like Music, Pulse and Gmail to be expanded to give you more details without having to open the app.
Google Search
The Google search has been significantly altered too. Natural language commands are now supported as Google is obviously ready to mount a serious challenge to Siri.
When you initiate a search you get a minimalist design card. What’s really cool is when you swipe to the left it shows you a list of Google Search results.
Availability
Jelly Bean will be available mid-July with a developer SDK preview available right now on the Android Developers website
Source: GSMArena And Android Developers
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