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Our sources familiar with the matter have gotten some tasty tidbits to share with us about the upcoming version of Android, Jelly Bean. The word is that there’s Galaxy Nexi – that belong to members of internal test groups for google – out there running preview builds of Jelly Bean If you’re visiting Android Headlines then chances are you’re more than likely familiar with the odd rumour or two and you probably know the score on version rumours etc on Android updates. Every so often Google release an update to Android that adds some more features, adds some polish and so on. After this release has come and gone the world starts to speculate on what’s coming next, I guess we’ve gotten used to Android releasing often by now. It’s come to our attention that Jelly Bean will more likely than not be a 4.X upgrade rather than the full blow 5.0 that’s been buzzing around the web.
I Like Jelly Beans but Will I like Android Jelly Bean?
According to our sources Jelly Bean will more than likely be more of a cosmetic update than the overhaul that Ice Cream Sandwich from Gingerbread was – on phones at least – so, the chances are you should like Android Jelly Bean. Here at Android Headlines we’ve heard that the JB (Jelly Bean) update – something we’ll all come to hear in the future – will be a cosmetic upgrade with more spit and polish than a remodelling, in terms of features. Something that certainly doesn’t sound like a bad idea, after all Gingerbread – that launched with the Nexus S October 2010 – was little more than a dressing up of FroYo. Gingerbread for me was Android’s coming of age, I had used – and enjoyed – FroYo before it but, the stock theme certainly didn’t fit with me, GB (Gingerbread) fixed this though and upped the ante on pretty. Since then I’ve not had much of an urge to theme stock Android at all bar the usual home screen stuff. The UI look was finally getting somewhere and it sure as hell showed.
Minor Updates can be Boring and Tedious; Why Should I Care?
Small updates to any OS can become boring – especially with added hype – but, they need to happen, right? ICS (Ice Cream Sandwich) was a major release for Android, well worth it’s Version 4.0 moniker. It tied smartphones and tablets together whilst bringing a good amount of new features to both. ICS looks a hell of a lot better – at least to me it does – than Honeycomb ever did on my tablet, the UI theming of ICS also translates very well to phones, looking better than GB did on my Nexus. Earlier on in the year we heard from Andy Rubin that Google plans to “double down” on Android tablets, pointing to a thorough polish of ICS rather than another overhaul. We all like updates, they keep our OS fresh, speedy and adds new features but, something not all of us – very few of us, in fact – like is a major overhaul of our systems twice a year. People can bash Android for updating too often – they sometimes use the ‘f word‘ – for its users to catch up with but, Apple does a major update once a year, every year. An update that pops up in iTunes for the average user and adds confusing elements all over the place, at least Android’s innovation is at a pace that flows well and doesn’t change the game in one big hit.
The Future
If Jelly Bean is indeed more of a polish – as Android Headlines have come to learn – then it would not only improve the platform but, in my eyes, make it easier for OEMs to update their phones from Ice Cream Sandwich with less going on under the hood. Meaning we should all be able to enjoy a handful of Jelly Beans quicker than some will get a slice of Ice Cream Sandwich. It’d also be the perfect thing to launch on a tablet, say a Nexus Tablet, don’t we think?