This just in from Google I/O: A system dump of Jelly Bean from a GSM Galaxy Nexus. You can run over to RootzWiki right now and grab yourself a copy.
Somewhere, deep in this zip file, are all the goodies we saw today at I/O. Expect bits from this to be chopped, ported, and crammed into existing devices shortly.
I'm going to get cracking on an emulator setup for a Jelly Bean edition of Getting To Know Android. Expect lots of pictures.
Who's excited?
Source: Rootzwiki
Gingerbread had a creepy skeleton zombie painting, Honeycomb packed a "tron bee," ICS hid a Nyan Droid, and now Jelly Bean too has an Easter egg to call its own.
Indeed, the egg first presents itself as a smiling red jelly bean complete with antennae when the user repeatedly taps the Android software version in settings (this can be seen on the left). In the background is whichever picture you've chosen as your wallpaper. Then, if you long-press anywhere on the screen, countless smaller jelly beans will emerge (seen on the right). What's more, you'll also be able to flick these smaller jelly beans off the screen should your spirit so desire.
It's kind of a tradition now for the Android team to create different boot animations for every Android release, and Jelly Bean is definitely no exception. Here's the boot animation from the Nexus 7 which is, as you all should know by now, the first device running Android 4.1:
If you need a refresher, here's the one from ICS, for comparison purposes (for science!):
Well, we now have yet another reason to envy Google I/O attendees - a signed copy of the official Jelly Bean build has just been released on the 'nets, but it seems to only be working on the 'takju' (GSM) Galaxy Nexuses given out at I/O 2012 (or at least those GNs with the IMM30D firmware).
You can grab it for yourself right here, if you're interested in what's inside the 156MB ZIP. Don't worry, GN owners - we're sure with the appropriate modifications from the dev community, you'll be able to flash some version of this soon enough - not to mention the countless other goodies that might emerge.
Today at Google I/O, I got some hands-on time with the brand-spanking-new Nexus 7 tablet. We've been pretty sure it's coming for a while now. Now that it's been officially unveiled, along with the newest version of Android, everybody and their gadget-loving grandma is chomping at the bit to see if the hype has been worthwhile.
In a word, yes, it has. Mostly. While my time with the Nexus 7 was limited, Android tablets are a sort of beast that are rather easy to evaluate quickly, mostly because they're all pretty similar. Now, the Nexus 7 is by no means a normal Android tablet, it's much better than that.
Coinciding with the announcement of Android 4.1 Jelly Bean, Android developers can now pull down a new revision of Android's SDK tools – revision 20, along with a new version of the ADT Plugin, also r20 (which Eclipse users will need to use SDK r20).
The revised SDK tools bring several improvements. One of the notable additions to the SDK tools is System Trace (otherwise known as systrace), a tool (included in Project Butter) that helps monitor system activities, allowing developers to pinpoint graphical rendering or other issues. For those wondering just what else is new, take it from the revision notes found at Android's Developer site:
General notes:
- Added new Device Monitor application, grouping Android debugging tools into a single application, including ddms, traceview, hierarchyviewer and Tracer for GLES.
Google Now is a feature we've been eagerly anticipating for what seems like forever now. In fact, we've been seeing hints at something like it since 2010. When Apple announced Siri last year, an official counterpart from Google became not only inevitable, but necessary - iOS' speech service provided direct Apple competition to Google's mobile search engine. Today, in one of the most notable announcements at I/O, the Big G made official its answer to Siri: the aforementioned Google Now.
Google Now uses actions you've performed on your phone in the past (i.e. your locations, calendar appointments, search queries, etc.) to form an idea of your general interests and habits.
One of the bigger changes we saw in the jump from Gingerbread/Honeycomb to Ice Cream Sandwich was in the camera app. ICS not only brought a streamlined, more subtle design to an app that so badly needed it, but also introduced zero shutter-lag, meaning the time between pressing the shutter release and capturing a photo was pushed down to (almost) zero. In fact in many cases, the time between touch and capture is imperceptible. This was huge.
At today's Jelly Bean announcement, however, we learned that Jelly Bean treats users to even more enhancements to the camera app. While they are rather minor tweaks, they enhance the app's productivity and usability by a lot, something that seems to be a common thread in Jelly Bean's enhancements.
Another major enhancement we've just learned about with the announcement of Jelly Bean is called Project Butter. Butter (so named likely due to the colloquialism "smooth as butter") represents a new, more efficient processing framework for Android's latest and greatest iteration, making the OS much faster (allowing animation up to 60fps). Android 4.1 also makes apps more responsive, reducing touch latency and "anticipating where your finger will be at the time of screen refresh."
"How is such an enhancement possible?" I can almost hear you wondering. Take it from the Android developer site:
To ensure a consistent framerate, Android 4.1 extends vsync timing across all drawing and animation done by the Android framework.
"Android has always put you in control when it comes to staying notified and connected. Now you can take action directly from the notifications shade," says Android's updated "What's New" page. Indeed, today's Jelly Bean announcement saw a number of improvements to the already handy notification system we've come to know and love in previous iterations of Android. Not only can the new notifications system display larger, richer notifications, developers can create actionable notification with interactive controls for telephony, music, and more.
With a new and improved Notification Builder, apps can create notifications with a height of up to 256dp.
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