

Android 4.1 Jelly Bean is now available - sindhiparsani
http://developer.android.com/about/versions/jelly-bean.html

======
saurik
Really? I thought the keynote explicitly said the SDK would be available
today, but that neither the source code nor the binary updates would be pushed
to the public (as opposed to hardware manufacturers, who now have ahead-of-
time PDK access) until mid-July.

(edit: In addition, the Nexus 7, running Jelly Bean, while available to
purchase today, will itself not be shipping until mid-July. I really don't
think it is available yet.)

~~~
wmf
The 24-minute news cycle doesn't make allowances for little things like facts.

------
nilliams
>> Faster, Smoother, More Responsive

Does all this finally mean it has actually caught up with iOS in terms of
touch-lag? And is this finally admittance that there was a problem all along?

I know some may jump to the defence of Android here, I've seen this argued ad
nauseam before, and yes I've tried some Android phones that didn't have
noticable lag, but the 'top of the range' Samsung Galaxy II tablet _is_
indisputably laggy when compared to an iPad 2.

If this is finally the fix we've (or maybe just I've) been waiting for then
congrats to Android, I'm really glad to see it.

~~~
veeti
Honeycomb and ICS aren't as smooth as iOS, but most of the lag that you're
experiencing on your tablet is coming from Samsung's terrible software and not
Android itself. The Galaxy Tabs are an embarrassment.

~~~
nilliams
Oh wow thanks, I hadn't realised that was the case, never actually heard
anyone state that so bluntly. Is it safe to say the ASUS tabs are smoother?

~~~
veeti
Definitely. I've played around with a friend's Transformer Prime for a bit and
it was mostly pretty fluid.

ASUS also makes far less modifications to the OS, too. Their devices are very
close to stock Android with just some small additions, some new apps and
wallpapers and whatever.

~~~
nilliams
Great, thanks that's good to know, my company is considering developing on
Android and the Samsung tabs are very off-putting :)

------
picklefish
For anyone wondering when it's coming to ICS phones.

"Google: Android 4.1 Jelly Bean coming to Samsung Galaxy Nexus, Nexus S and
Motorola Xoom mid-July"

from: [http://www.engadget.com/2012/06/27/google-
android-4-1-jelly-...](http://www.engadget.com/2012/06/27/google-
android-4-1-jelly-bean-coming-to-samsung-galaxy-nexus-m/)

~~~
antihero
Or if you've rooted, there are ROMs already available... <http://forum.xda-
developers.com/showthread.php?t=1737849>

------
javajosh
Until the fragmentation problem is fixed, every new Android release only fills
me with dread.

Normally when new versions of frameworks or software that I use come out, I
like it. Except Android, because _every new version of Android has lots of
nice features that I won't be able to use and it is guaranteed to further
fragment of the marketplace._

Android is the (old) Internet Explorer of mobile. I've never seen one
application skew across versions so hard, or single-handedly fragment the
space as much. (BTW kudos to MS for strongly encouraging their IE users
upgrade).

What makes this perplexing is that Google has solved this problem with most of
their other installed software offerings, Chrome particularly. There's
basically only one version of Chrome (v 19 as I write this). Heck, even MS
realized their mistake and is making efforts to roll up old IE users into the
latest version. And of course Apple has done a fantastic job keeping all of
it's users at the same iOS version.

I am well-aware of the OEM madness that drives Android fragmentation, and that
you might think it's not "Google's fault" because of this. But I disagree.
Google has vast resources and can basically do whatever it wants. If it wanted
to require OEMs to build Android-upgradable phones, it could force them to do
so. In fact, if they started doing this today you would hear loud cheers from
around the world (and bitter complaining from the OEMs, but so what? There's a
lot of money to be made and they'll get in line).

~~~
jsight
91% of the Android market is covered by 3 major versions (2.2, 2.3, and 4.0).
72% is covered by just two major versions (2.3 and 4.0).

This problem isn't quite as severe as its made out to be. Dealing with the
diverse hardware ecosystem and implementation bugs are both much larger
problems, IMO.

~~~
moe
This report disagrees with you rather strongly:

<http://opensignalmaps.com/reports/fragmentation.php>

It claims 2.3 and 2.4 make up for ~75% of the installed base, and the
remaining 25% is just a mess.

~~~
briancooley
The official dashboard is
<http://developer.android.com/about/dashboards/index.html> and has been
updated fairly often - maybe once a month or so - since ICS released.

According to that chart, about 84% of devices that have accessed Google Play
are on Froyo or Gingerbread, and another 7% are on ICS.

Pretty much all of the phone market is concentrated in Gingerbread and Froyo.
I think fewer than 10 types of phone are on ICS.

~~~
brazzy
Sony alone moved about 10 differen models released in 2011 to ICS about two
weeks ago, mine among them.

------
javajosh
Let me offer a solution: It's time for Google to offer a Google+ Certification
for Android. These certified devices would have two important characteristics:

1\. They are guaranteed to run the latest version of Android for 5 years.

2\. They are guaranteed to have a clean version of Android, without any
carrier or device maker modifications.

No doubt the marketing people can come up with other things to add to the
list, but that's the gist of it.

If such a certification existed, personally I would _only_ shop among those
options.

Such a certification would require that Google have some sort of compatibility
criteria, and that their future development efforts run well within those
criteria. So it constrains Google just as much as the OEMs. The certification
should be cheap, but not free. And I picked the name for Sergey's buy-in.

The nice thing about this (voluntary) certification program is that OEMs don't
_have_ to participate. And in fact could have certified and uncertified
devices. The program captures the essential qualities that made the iPhone
successful, in my opinion. The App Store is a big part of their success, and
developing for the iPhone is far more pleasant because of the stability of the
platform.

EDIT: Okay, if it was 3 years I'd still be happy.

~~~
timdorr
This is great. The only thing I have a gripe with is:

> They are guaranteed to run the latest version of Android for 5 years.

5 years is too long. The HTC Dream, the first Android phone, was released less
than 4 years ago. It only has a 528Mhz processor and 192MB of RAM. I don't
want to know what the ICS or JB experience would be on that device...

Keep in mind the iPhone only turned 5 this year (the App Store turns 4 in a
couple weeks). And the last version that supported it (with limited features)
was released 3 years afterwards.

I think 3 years is more reasonable. Most people are eligible for a discounted
phone upgrade every 2 years. I think that would fit in for most folks.

~~~
zanny
The problem with this argument is that we don't have any more extreme strides
in mobile performance in the next 5 years. We already have phones that can
effectively run any intensity of "eye candy" with spiff - by the time such a
policy came to market in 2 years, it would be 2014 - unless we have a
revolution in tech that lets us crank up the ghz without dramatically
increasing the voltage to match, any arm based device for Android will be able
to run any degree of eye candy they can add in in the "short term".

Back in 2008, we could easily see that the 500mhz single core ARM chip was
going to be short lived. We had tremendous strides in performance available to
us in just upping core clocks, and then we had the mobile multicore
revolution.

We are done with both the main vein and the secondary digs of the mobile CPU
goldmine (in reference to Herb here) and we are already pretty deep into
heterogeneous computing. Remote processing is next, when the telecom monopoly
is torn down so we can get the data speeds we are actually capable of today
without paying monopoly rates.

The hardware WILL get significantly better between 2014 and 2019 - a 2019
smartphone will almost assuredly be as powerful as the 2014 consoles that will
be coming out for gaming - but we can actually predict that. A 2014 console
will have approximately a GCN 7850 graphics card and quad core 3.5 ghz cpu of
some sort. So expect the mobile chip of 2019 to operate at ~4ghz with some
number of cores and a lot of compute nodes approximately equivalent to modern
mainstream desktop graphics at similar wattages to what we have now.

If the version of Android in 2019 can't run on an Android device of 2014, then
that isn't the hardware not keeping up with software - that is just terrible
design. Just like how desktop hardware peaked in 2006, mobile hardware will
peak soon as well, after which performance is "good enough" for average joe
consumer, and the UX won't change.

Another good example is how Google can keep pumping out new versions of Chrome
without hesitation that the last version's user can run the new version. The
browser is not getting exponentially more power or resource hungry, and in
many ways they optimize its performance as much as they sacrifice it each
release for better experience (of course things like webgl are pressuring
browsers upwards with new usage in an environment without resource contraints)
but the basic device, or in this case application, is not growing more and
more computationally intensive by large jumps each release, or they would not
be able to push out silent updates like they do.

Same thing with Android. Once it plateaus, there is no excuse not to use the
silent continuous always backwards compatble update model, because the device
is now "good enough". Just like how a dual core 3ghz pc from 2005 with 4gb of
ram is still good enough today for 95% of use cases.

~~~
glogla
Desktop didn't really peak out at 2006. The clock speeds are not really
raising anymore, true, but both architectural and fab improvements make a
difference. If you take a look at benchmarks on anandtech for example, you'll
find that current CPUs are about five or six times faster in well
parallelizable tasks like video encoding or about three times faster in tasks
that don't parallelize well.

While this might not seems like much, waiting for something one minute instead
of five makes a difference, and 2006 computer won't play FullHD video, and
you'll feel the difference on js heavy web pages.

~~~
lmm
Won't play FullHD video? Maybe if you're talking about crazy
everything-x264-can-do encodings, but a decent 2006 computer will have a
geforce 7xxx or similar and play "normal" FullHD video like you buy from
itunes just fine.

~~~
glogla
But without the GPU (and I'm not sure how geforce 7xxx driver support looks
now) even 720p videos might get problematic, some becoming pretty much a
slideshow, some being just slightly uncomfortable when going around 20 fps. I
know they do on my 2007 macbook.

~~~
zanny
The problem is that the general use case doesn't have a media center pc from
2007, "A significant portion" of consumer hardware is EXCUSIVELY for web
browsing and word processing. Sources: every single relative I have except for
my father who uses trading software to watch stocks, only use a combination of
word (if I haven't touched their boxes), libre office (if I have), ie (if I
haven't) or firefox (if I have). Those two cases cover 90% of pc use, maybe
some photo browsing, but none of them watch video on a general purpose pc.
(yet). Netflix probably changes that.

------
nickpresta
_Audio chaining

MediaPlayer supports chaining audio streams together to play audio files
without pauses. This is useful for apps that require seamless transitions
between audio files such as music players to play albums with continuous
tracks or games._

Best feature by far!

------
anigbrowl
Woah, they actually fixed the audio, at long last. Maybe my Android tablet
will make music after all.

~~~
hahainternet
In the post keynote workshop, they noted that this is not entirely fixed. They
have made improvements but they also acknowledge they have some distance to go
to have it perfect.

I don't have the technical details of the updates, and I doubt anyone will for
a short while.

------
mshafrir
This is just the Android 4.1 API Docs for now.

------
hu_me
Did google just replace Cue (Greplin) with Google Now feature?

------
rwmj
Still no Japanese input though?

~~~
shangaslammi
It's still in beta, so not bundled with the OS yet.
[https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.google.and...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.google.android.inputmethod.japanese&hl=en)

------
drivebyacct2
Interesting RE: App Encryption. I had mentioned that years ago in IRC before
Android was even a blip on Apple's radar and I was told that would not happen
because the Market didn't want to ever modify the uploaded APK. It will be
interesting to see if this curtails pirating, or more likely, just adds an
extra step in the piracy process.

------
rprasad
My phone, purchased brand-new last summer (the model itself is almost, but not
quite a year old), still runs Android 2.3. It will run Android 2.3 forever,
even though Google owns the company that made it. Jelly Bean, released last
year, is still on less than 10% of all Android phones, and may never even
exceed 15%.

If Google can't get its act together on the update situation, a lot of people,
myself included, will not be buying Android phones the next time our contracts
are up.

~~~
zmmmmm
What I find disingenuous about this line of argument is that you (and
everybody who argues it) know full well that you will not be keeping your
current phone "forever", and in fact, it's almost 100% certain you will
replace it within 2 years if not 12 months simply because of the 2 year
upgrade cycle that exists in many carriers or if not, because of the lure of
next generation hardware will convince you to buy a new phone.

So what you are actually asking for is for tremendous engineering resources to
be spent to port the bleeding edge OS to your soon to be obsolete phone so
that you can use it for a few months and then toss it in the bin.

Now I'm not necessarily arguing that there isn't an issue with upgrade on
Android phones etc. But I find this particular tone of "I will be stuck
forever with an outdated OS thanks to Google" that appears regularly in these
comments to be somewhat disingenuous.

PS: Jelly Bean was not released last year, it was announced literally just
hours ago.

~~~
rprasad
Whoops you are right. I meant Ice Cream Sandwich, not Jelly Bean.

But my point stands. Most people buy new phones on a 2 year cycle when their
contract expires. _I_ buy phones on a 2-year cycle.

I am not expecting tremendous engineering resources to be spent on porting on
bleeding edge OS to an obsolete phone. I am expecting _some_ resources to be
spent on porting my phone to an OS that was announced and available to OEMs
when my phone was released. I _am_ expecting an OS to be released on a phone
which _has the hardware to support it_.

I am stuck with an outdated OS thanks to Google, becaues they won't do a damn
thing to pressure carriers or manufacturers to remedy the update situation.

And you know what? _The money I use to buy my phone is my money_. When the
time comes to vote with my wallet, if Google has not fixed the update
situation it created, I will vote for something other than Android.

~~~
lostsock
<quote>I am expecting some resources to be spent on porting my phone to an OS
that was announced and available to OEMs when my phone was released.</quote>

Why didn't you just buy a phone which already had the latest OS on it at the
time if having the latest OS is important to you? Are there no custom ROMS for
the phone you have?

~~~
rprasad
1) Available to OEMs does not mean that any OEMs had yet released phones with
it on my carrier. I have unlimited data, which effectively shackles me to the
carrier unless I want to give that up for a pitiful 2-4 GB/month.

2) I connect to a corporate server. I cannot use a custom ROM for security
reasons.

