By Matt Hale
In early July, Google hosted its annual developer conference, unveiling new products to a gaggle of tongue wagging techies looking for a peek into the Android future. The major product launches - the Nexus 7 tablet and the Nexus Q home theater streaming device - were exciting enough and could portend great things for Google’s ever-expanding Android platform.
The most significant news for many Android users, however, was the launch of its next generation operating system called Jelly Bean.
Here’s what's new:
1) Project Butter: Users of the Samsung Galaxy Nexus and a few other Motorola and Samsung models have experienced (with a few hiccups) the enhancements Google made from the earlier Android versions to the current 4.0, called Ice Cream Sandwich. Android 4.0 made the operating system feel “finished” in a way users of the iPhone and Windows Phone users bragged about. Project Butter expands on that polish and improves performance beyond anything they've accomplished to date.
With Jelly Bean, the performance gains are significant. There’s no lag between apps, animations are smooth and my Galaxy Nexus has experienced very few crashes. While these may seem like insignificant improvements, consider that the faster your phone completes simple tasks, the more time your battery has to relax and, hopefully, improve its duration.
But one of the most exciting developments is:
2) Offline Voice Typing: Even in major markets like Los Angeles, there are dead zones where coverage drops off and basic phone functions fail. Prior to Jelly Bean, voice typing to crank out an email or reply to a text message hands-free while driving required a steady data connection and had a lengthy lag between speaking and the words appearing. No more. The offline voice typing functionality virtually erases lag and allows for reliable voice typing even when between cell towers. One of Android’s most useful and advanced features is even better.
3) Auto Resizing Widgets: Drag a widget from the app drawer to the homescreen and it will automatically resize to fit the available space. Pretty useful when you configure your home screens.
4) New Beam Features: Most new Android phones are equipped with a Near Field Communications (NFC) chip that allows for quick wireless connections to be established between nearby devices. Google has expanded the functionality to allow image transfers between NFC devices and quick pairing with bluetooth headsets and media devices like Nexus Q, the newly released home theater streaming device.
5) Revamped Notification Menu: Android’s notification bar has been a mainstay at the top of screens since its inception. Different notification iterations have graced each new Android version, increasing its usefulness in giving us a glimpse at our incoming messages with a simple glance and a swipe from the top of the screen down. Now, the notification bar is even more convenient, as notifications expand when adjacent notifications are cleared. Five new emails? The Gmail notification displays each subject line, giving you more intel on incoming emails. Event come up on your calendar? Buttons now appear to dismiss the reminder and offer the option of emailing attendees to let them know you’re running late.
The best part? The new notifications look beautiful. Font sizes have been adjusted and background colors are a little different from Android 4.0 with a dark blue behind the persistent icons, dark grey behind the floating notifications and black behind the text making the interface look more consistent with the rest of the operating system. It just looks slick. Well done, Google designers.
6) Google Now: This is Google’s long awaited shot across Apple’s bow in the voice-activated personal assistant market space. There is a significant mystique and wow-factor around Apple’s popular and heavily-advertised Siri. What’s intriguing about Google Now is not that they’ve tried to mimic Apple's personal assistant app, though you can certainly call on the voice-activated system for basic facts and figures.
Instead, Google laid a foundation that could revolutionize the way we interact with our phones, inventing a new system that melds to our routines based on patterns we establish.
For example, your alarm wakes you up and Google Now, knowing your routine, displays the day’s weather and traffic between your home and your first appointment, recommending the fastest route. When you approach a bus stop or train station, Google Now tells you when the next coach will arrive and routes you to your next calendar entry (or home if there aren’t any left).
If the weather forecast changes dramatically, the weather tile pops into your notification bar to let you know what cold front or heat wave is coming. Tiles for nearby landmarks appear on your screen to let you know what’s around and let you check in on Google+, if that’s your thing. If you’ve searched for a flight, a notification will appear whenever its status changes, letting you know if you’re on time or if you should wait for a delay before heading to the airport.
Dodgers fan? If you’ve ever searched for them, tiles will appear to update you on games in progress, with links to buy tickets. And Google has only started tapping the wide expanses of the internet to customize our experience.
While the aforementioned features are now in place, imagine if Yelp or Fandango could plug into the Google Now infrastructure. Nearby restaurants and bars with four stars (or whatever quality you desire) could show their specials, letting you know where to go for happy hour. Movies playing soon could appear with a link to buy tickets. Useful at home, for sure, but incredible when you visit a new burg without a tour guide.
Evolutionary, Not Revolutionary
Does this make for a groundbreaking release that will change the smartphone market in the way the original iPhone did? No. What made Android 4.0 great, that “finished” feeling, is magnified and enhanced in Android 4.1. The release is less groundbreaking and more polish and shine. This is not a bad thing, as many of the Jelly Bean features feel so natural you’ll forget they were never there to begin with.
With a few enhancements, Google Now could be the smartphone feature to beat. In its current format, it’s an easy, smart, quick tool to access what’s already in your browser, syncing beautifully to our Google searches in a context that’s both attractive and useful.
But, if you’re like me and 350 million of my friends, Google has our web search history and knows a lot about what we do and what we like. Ignoring the “big brother” implications, Google is finally starting to leverage its enormous piles of data to create useful functionality that Apple and Microsoft cannot duplicate.
Is Google Now completely there yet? Definitely not, but this geek is looking forward to what the future holds.
