Google I/O: Android Jelly Bean and Nexus devices

Google's annual developer conference, Google I/O, is in its fifth year. Last year, the company announced 100 million Android devices were activated. This year, it's 400 million, with over 1 million activations a day. Besides the huge numbers, the company announced three major highlights, including an update to its mobile operating system in the form of Android 4.1, Jelly Bean, which comes with a virtual assistant similar to Apple's Siri (but different, of course).

The company also made much ado about a new Nexus-branded tablet made by Asus as well as a new Android-powered entertainment system called Nexus Q. Here's a quick summary of the highlights:

Jelly Bean

Meet Jelly Bean, the update of the Mountain View-based company's Android operating system. Following in the footsteps of Eclair, Froyo and Gingerbread, the update doesn't bump the OS version number up to 5.0--instead, Jelly Bean is Android 4.1. It will be available in mid-July over the air for the Galaxy Nexus, Nexus Sand Motorola Xoom. If you have a non-stock device, you would have to wait for your manufacturer to roll out the update.

                                          Project Butter
                   
The 4.1 update brings about a whole bunch of new features, including Project Butter, a performance-based enhancement to make the phone experience smooth (like butter). It uses VSync and Triple Buffering to enhance the touch responsiveness.

                                           Widget
                
Jelly Bean also tweaks the Widget adding experience--it will automatically move apps around to make it easy for you to place it, and will resize itself to fit the available space if it is too big.


                                         Voice Typing

                
Voice Typing now works offline--Google has shrunk the Google Speech recognizer to fit on the device. It currently supports US English, but more languages will be added later.

                                          Camera
                
Improvements are introduced to the Camera, too. There's now a film strip mode, easy deletion of pictures by swiping upwards as well as an undo button.

                                   Notifications

                 
The Notifications menu has been buffed up with lots of enhancements. You can now +1 or share photos, respond to notifications without having to open the app, and use a two-finger gesture to expand a notification for more information.

                                    Google Now
                  
If you're searching for something through your phone, cards will pop up with the relevant information. It will also be read back to you. Demos include providing the answer to questions like "who is the prime minister of Japan" to showing you pictures of pygmy marmosets.

Google Now is also a new feature that uses the new Card UI and incorporates traffic results, tells you when your next appointment is, helps you plan your travel itinerary and gets smarter as you use it more. Sounds familiar? Oh hello, Siri.

                                            Nexus 7
                   
Meet the new Nexus 7 tablet. Built by Asus, the Jelly Bean slate will retail for US$199. It runs on a quad-core Tegra 3 processor, have 8GB onboard flash storage, a 7-inch WXGA (1,280 x 800 pixel) IPS display and weighs just 340g. Nvidia CEO Jen-Hsun Huang had previously hinted that a tablet with these specs will be available this year.

If anything, Amazon should be worried--the Nexus 7 cuts straight at the Kindle Fire's price point, while managing to sport much better hardware. It also features a lot of tweaks designed for users to discover and read content. Chrome will also ship as the standard browser for the Nexus 7.

However, with the rumored Kindle Fire 2 expected to be announced next week--it should be interesting to see what features it will sport and how it will compete with Google's new tablet. Of course, the Kindle Fire 2 is unlikely to be available in Asia while the Nexus 7 will be.

The Nexus 7 is slated for a mid-July launch--you'll be able to order it from play.google.com, but Google is making it available in the US, Canada, UK and Australia first, with more countries to follow later. 

                                                 Nexus Q
                   
The sphere-like Android computer is basically an entertainment device that's hooked up to your home TV and speakers. It runs on the same processor as the Galaxy Nexus.

Instead of streaming content to the Nexus Q, the device connects directly to Google Play. This means you can use your handset to tell the Nexus Q to play content without waiting for it to stream.

Google also calls it the first "social streaming device", which means friends can add songs and videos to your Q (located at your home). Friends can also take control and push their content to the top. We hope your friends have good tastes in music.

Like the Nexus 7, the Nexus Q will be shipping in mid-July from play.google.com and will retail for US$299.

From:asia.cnet.com

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Android 5 Jelly Bean: I Say Innovation, You Say Fragmentation...

Summary: A new version of Google’s Android mobile OS is expected to be unveiled at the Google I/O conference in late June. Will that leave developers or enterprises wanting to call the whole thing off?

Ah, June. The beginning of summer, when the kids are finally released from school, and Gadgets are finally released from the Purgatory between Digitimes Taiwan rumor and Midwestern Best Buy store shelf.

The hottest gadget rumor, lately even hotter than the iPhone 5, and wayyy hotter than thequickly-dismissed Facebook phone, is the Google Nexus tablet. This would be Google’s second attempt at mobile hardware - its Google Nexus smartphone was a non-starter. It will allegedly be built by Asus, not Google’s recently-swallowed Motorola Mobility, and run Nvidia’s quad-core Tegra 3 chipset. It will be 7 inches, cost a Kindle-matching $200 and be the debut of the latest Android update, version 5.0, aka Jelly Bean.

For consumers, Jelly Bean should indeed be sweet. Rumors say goodies include a Siri-like voice assistant, Google’s suddenly market-leading Chrome Web browser, better touch keyboard, more integration with Google services and more tablet-specific features.

For enterprises, rumored features they would care about include the ability to run on laptops (and possibly even dual-boot with Microsoft Windows), a file system, increased protection from malware, including the dumping of Adobe’s already-dying mobile Flash player.

The other good news for enterprises is that Jelly Bean heralds a new era wherein Google will only release one major Android update per year.



How sweet will Android Jelly Bean be for enterprises?

Google started off frenetically, taking the ’ship early, ship often’ mantra literally. In 2009, Google released three updates to Android (Cupcake, Donut and Eclair). After complaints, it slowed the pace to bi-annual updates in the last two years.

The problem is that Google’s hardware partners still haven’t caught up. Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich is only running on about 5% of devices today. Almost two-thirds of devices are still running Android 2.3 Gingerbread. Even Android 2.1 Eclair, released 2.5 years ago, has more users than ICS.

The Samsungs and HTCs of this world remain slow about releasing their newest hardware with the latest Android update installed (though the vendors would retort that Google’s processes are to blame). They are also excruciatingly slow about making Android updates available to devices already out in the field (if at all).

By going to one update a year, providing better previews to key hardware and software partners, and clamping down on roadmap rumors, Cupertino-style, Google can go a long way towards turning a negative (fragmentation) into a positive (sustained, regular innovation).

I am also hoping that the lack of leaks about hard-core enterprise features in Jelly Bean are only because these kinds of features aren’t sexy enough for the Rumor Mill.

Broadly speaking, Android remains the least secure and manageable of the major mobile platforms, partly because it lacks those features itself, but mostly because it doesn’t allow third-party developers to easily implement them.

If Google opens up a significant number of Android APIs related to securing and managing devices, this would improve its reputation immensely, and overnight turn it into a true enterprise and BYOD contender versus iOS.

In the meantime, enterprises wanting to deploy Android should turn to devices like the Galaxy line of smartphones and tablets. Samsung has done special engineering work to enable certain Mobile Device Management (MDM) software like SAP Afaria to have more control and security features. As a result, SAP has approved Galaxy devices for employee use, and now has more than 1,000 workers using them.

From:zdnet.com

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