Android 4.1 Jelly Bean Now Official: Project Butter, Better Notifications, Google Now, And More


Over at Google I/O, the news about Android 4.1 - a.k.a. Jelly Bean, if you haven't heard - just broke.
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The first announcement was Project Butter, a new processing framework for Android that should make it run much, much faster - up to 60fps, in fact. The CPU and graphics will now work together in harmony, with the latter being triple-buffered, meaning things like scrolling and transitions should be noticeably faster. Source : AndroidPolice 
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There's also going to be improved voice input, including support for offline voice-to-text, which should be exciting. Speaking of input, there's now going to be 18 more input languages, from Hebrew to improved Arabic support.
For blind users, there will also be improved accessibility, another requested feature.
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Notably, the camera app has also been improved - users can now pinch to see the camera and gallery side-by-side, so you can swipe to the photo you just took.
Another improved feature is Android Beam, which will now allow you to share files between phones. You'll also be able to simply tap an NFC-capable speaker to pair with it - nice.
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Android's already awesome notification system is also seeing an update, wherein your notifications for a certain app will be grouped together, and devs will be given more APIs. These APIs will allow users to control music apps from within the notification bar, and the notifications will expand or collapse upon your command. Sexy.
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Google Search is also being improved, as we've been hearing about. There are now short "cards" with information about celebrities, weather, maps, etc. - so you will no longer have to dig through full Google results (though these will be available should you want them).
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Another new feature is Google Now, which uses past actions for which you've used your phone to figure out useful things like faster routes home, bus / train schedules, restaurant menus, flight info, and sport scores. You can access all this from the search box or by swiping up from the bottom of the screen.
Jelly Bean will start rolling out to the Galaxy Nexus, Nexus S, and Motorola XOOM mid-July, but the SDK is available today. If you're not drooling yet, there's something wrong with you.
   Sid Goswami is a tech enthusiast, besides being an avid Android fan and blogger, Sid wants to be a photographer and an designer. He can usually be found reading through blogs, taking photos. He's a student and a PHP web developer.

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