Hands-on with Android 4.1 Jelly Bean on the Google Galaxy Nexus

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Here at Google I/O 2012, the search giant handed out Galaxy Nexus smartphones to attendees that were updated with a preview version of the new Android 4.1 Jelly Bean operating system. We got our hands on one and gave it a quick tour to check out the new features.

There a number of new features in Android 4.1 Jelly Bean, but the most prominent ones are the improved touch response and performance, offline voice to text transcription, new home screen and widget management, revamped notification bar, and Google Now intelligent search tool.

Performance-wise, Android 4.1 Jelly Bean on the Galaxy Nexus appears to be snappy and quick, but that is often the case when a phone is loaded with a clean operating system for the first time. In our experience, once the phone has been in use and loaded with apps and data, it tends to slow down significantly. We will have to see if that happens with Android 4.1, or if Google's under-the-hood improvements are really making a difference in the long run.

Google's new offline voice transcription works as promised and makes the existing feature more usable in more situations. The new home screen and widget management features are well done and add to the already improved experience offered in Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich. Likewise, the new notification bar offers more information than before and the ability to swipe down with two fingers to display even more data if wanted. It is also possible to perform actions, such as reply or comment, on notifications that display in the new status bar.

Google Now is a big new feature that promises to make it easier to carry out day-to-day tasks. Google's goal with Now is to provide information to the user without them asking for it. It does this by combining data from past search history, current location, and upcoming calendar data to inform the user of such things as weather, flight times, transportation information, upcoming events, and more. We didn't get a whole lot of time to play with Google Now just yet, but we look forward to taking a deeper dive into it when we have a final, proper version of Android 4.1 Jelly Bean to test.

All in all, Android 4.1 Jelly Bean is most certainly an incremental improvement over Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich, but the new features and performance enhancements promise to provide a better experience for many users, which is the most important thing of all. Unfortunately, it may be a long time before many Android owners get to benefit from Jelly Bean's improvements, as the vast majority of devices in use today aren't even running Android 4.0 yet. The Jelly Bean update is shipping on the new Google Nexus 7 tablet and will be available for the Galaxy Nexus and Nexus S smartphones in mid-July. Other than that, we really don't know when it will come to the multitude of Android devices in use today.

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