Review of Android 4.2 Jelly Bean

This is my review of Android 4.2 Jelly Bean. Your mileage or experiences may vary as I can only base this on how this update has affected my Galaxy Nexus after the OTA update (on a phone that was having a few issues, so was probably due a factory reset anyway).

Minor update?

This update came a little out of nowhere. The software came out to coincide with the release of the new Nexus devices - the 'direction of the OS' hardware, produced with Google's direct guidance by the OEMs. Each new Nexus device has coincided with the release of a new version of Android, those releases being named after sweets and puddings (gingerbread, honeycomb, ice cream sandwich...) most of these have been "dot upgrades" in that the version numbers have increased by a whole number, or a decimal and had a new tasty name.



This update is named Android 4.2 Jelly Bean, which is a bit of a strange one given that it carries the same name as 4.1, which was released earlier in the year.

The 'dot upgrade' denoted that this is a bigger upgrade than just bugfixes and a couple of features (which are released as 4.1.1, 4.1.2 etc), but the lack of a new name has encouraged some to describe this as a minor upgrade, or a "slight tweak".

My experiences having tried this out for a week is that this is every bit the 'dot upgrade' and certainly not a minor tweak. The headline features are in effect just a few interesting apps bundled with the OS, but having these all tightly woven into the software really helps things run smoothly and efficiently.
The changes behind the scenes, while few in number, are definitely worth having.

Bugs?

As with many 'top secret' software upgrades, the testing is done with as large a test group as can be trusted, however the true test of the software comes once it starts rolling out to end users.

A few bugs have been reported by those who have received the OTA update on their Galaxy Nexuses and Nexus 7s, and those having received the Nexus 4 and Nexus 10 since they were launched a couple of weeks ago.

Of all the bugs mentioned in the forums I haven't experienced any. My phone has sped up, the battery life has improved, my signal is unchanged and everything is very nice, thanks.

The one glitch I do see is the missing 'December' in the People app. But as the date feature in this app is really only used for birthdays, and I keep my birthday records on a separate Google Calendar I have not been affected by this.

[For those who are bothered by it, Google has acknowledged the error and is already pushing out the 4.2.1 update to Nexus devices]

Supported devices:

One further issue is whether you are going to get the update on your Android phone.

As I mentioned before, this update is pushing out to the Galaxy Nexus and the Nexus 7 tablet. Unfortunately this is the limit of already released Nexus devices that will get the update. The HTC Nexus One is already beyond help, and this OS release marks the first that the Samsung Nexus S won't be receiving, limiting it to the previous update - 4.1.2 (Jelly Bean) as its final version.

If you have a non-Nexus device then the update is going to be a while off - if you receive it at all.

In case you weren't aware of the process, the manufacturers of Android mobiles all put their own skins/UI on top of the 'stock' operating system in order to differentiate them and encourage brand recognition, so that Samsung owners are more likely to buy a Samsung device for their next phone. The down side to this is that it takes ages for the manufacturer to re-skin a new version of the OS, fully test it and then arrange to push it out Over The Air (OTA) to their customers. And if your phone isn't one of the newer handsets your manufacturer may even decide it's not worth their time or money building and testing the updates.

I am certain that the newest flagship phones - Samsung Galaxy S3, HTC One X and so on will get the update, but expect it to take 2 or 3 months.


So, with all that chattiness out of the way, on to the review!!

Features:

First of all here's a handy list of the elements I'll be covering, so you can scroll down to a feature - as I'm aware I will be rambling on a bit...

• Lockscreen widgets
• Notification toggles
• Camera and Photosphere
• Gallery
• Clock and clock widget
• Gesture keyboard
• Daydream

Lockscreen widgets

In each version of Android since 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich) Google has brought out something new to adjust and augment the usefulness of the lockscreen.There was Face Unlock, which used the camera to recognise you and unlock the screen without typing in the password/PIN/pattern. This was upgraded to 4.1 to require blinking in order to protect against people using photos to unlock with!


ICS also brought us the ability to open the camera directly from the lock screen, which was a lovely idea, but as all sensible people use a PIN (or alternative) on their lockscreen, this had to be entered before the camera launched, making the process really not that much faster than unlocking the phone and then tapping on the camera icon.


Finally with 4.2 we have a solution for the security-conscious in the shape of the lockscreen widgets.

When you wake your phone to the lockscreen you are now shown the clock (as before), but with a screen animations hinting at offscreen fun...

Swipe to the left to bring up an 'Add' screen where you can select a widget from the list: Calendar, Clock, Messaging or GMail. Once chosen this will stay attached to the left of the lockscreen and available at a single swipe. The data visible is of course on display to anyone who picks up your phone, but happily no-one can select the items (emails, texts, calendar appointments) to view in more details without unlocking the phone through your chosen method.

(I would recommend not using the Messaging or Gmail options as just the subject lines are a privacy issue to most people, even if they can't read the whole thing.)



The biggest bonus here though is found if you swipe to the right from the main lockscreen and launch the camera! No unlocking required - you can just swipe right and then go ahead and snap away. The photos you take in that 'session' are visible too in the normal way (swipe to the right again), but in order to see the full gallery of pictures you have to unlock the phone.

I used this new feature in a very pleased-face sort of way yesterday when I picked up a poorly moth on my finger. I decided to take a quick photo and pulled out my phone. A tap of the power button and a swipe to the right and I was snapping away - much improved from the former process.

Notification Toggles

Finally, after a long time of the OEMs adding toggles to the notification pane, Google has got in on the action. I am quite happy for a little style here, with the notification pane remaining nearly the same in its nicely uncluttered appearance, but with the notification toggles appearing as a separate pane that you 'flip' around to by hitting the new button on the top right.

Of course if you are a fancy-pants gent or lady you might just want to do this in one move by swiping the toggles pane down with 2 fingers instead of the standard 1 for the main panel.



Once you've pulled it down you now have access to see and toggle (or launch the settings features for...) Wifi, Mobile Data, Battery, Aeroplane Mode, Bluetooth, Alarms, Brightness and then the links to your Google Plus profile (on Android 4.2 tablets this is a link to change the user of the device) and the full Settings menu.


While I would have preferred if more of these were toggles, rather than settings menu links, they are at least a quick way to see the status of the features (like battery) and much better than the previous situation of hunting in the menus. And more pleasing than using a third-party alternative like Notifications Toggle - which is, to be fair, rather good.

The camera, and Photosphere

The camera has had a much-needed overhaul in 4.2 in terms of its interface. The options buttons were just too small before and too fiddly to set easily and quickly.

The absence of the gallery icon means you have to remember to swipe to the right to see your images, and you can edit, share and delete them here too.

The ring can be launched by pressing the ring icon beside the shutter button (where the gallery icon used to be). You can also launch it by holding your finger anywhere on the screen and then swiping in the relevant direction to select and alter each option as required. Once you've done it once or twice it becomes natural to use and a huge productivity win!

The options ring has fixed that making it simple to adjust exposure, flash, White Balance and jump into the main settings. There is also the toggle for front/rear camera.

(On the Nexus 4 the ring also provides a link to HDR mode, which is sadly missing from the GNex version. *sadness*)

The other options button on the camera screen is an improved (read: larger) mode selector, allowing you to choose from camera, video, panorama and photosphere...

Oh, and you can still zoom (rubbish digital zoom of course), but as the zoom bar has been 'disappeared' you just need to pinch anywhere onscreen.



Ok, here's the biggie.

Whether you see photosphere as a gimmick, or a useful feature will clearly divide opinion for a while. Android has had a panorama mode since ICS, but this new photo mode has given us the ability to create fully-immersive Street View-like experiences with our phones. I for one find this quite exciting.

No, the images aren't world class in terms of resolution, but then you are never going to print these out (unless you have an easy method for printing onto the inside of a gigantic ball?), so as long as they look good on a screen, surely that's all that matters?



My review on the feature was posted last week, and goes into some detail about how the system works and how easy/effective it is.

It is sufficient to say that I love the mountain-top panoramas you can make with this tool, and I am jolly excited that Google is now allowing us to submit these for inclusion in Google Maps, and will be jolly pleased when this means they have cloud-sourced photographs from many peaks in my favourite mountain ranges :)

I feel another trip to the Lake District is on the cards for me...




With the inclusion of photosphere in 4.2 I was actually a little surprised to see that panorama mode was still available. I assumed that maybe they had improved pano mode, but that doesn't seem to be the case. As pano is limited to (up to) 180 degrees, it is at times a little limited. In addition I was always disappointed that it only created images of 640px tall - much lower than most of the competition. With Photosphere you can now easily (easier than pano mode in my opinion) create a single layer panorama - without making a sphere - of whatever circumference you desire - up to 360 degrees of course. The height of these images is over 1000px, so nearly twice the resolution of the pano mode equivalent.

In my opinion this makes pano mode completely redundant as it is slighty more temperamental, at times slower, lower res, restricted in scope and just less cool. Sorry standard panoramas - I won't be using you again. I can only assume it is just still here for any semi-luddites who only use features on their second outing?

Gallery

Tied in with the new camera enhancements are the changes to the gallery app.

Apparently the database has been streamlined to make it more efficient (mine is stuffed full, so I may need to backup and offload some of my thousands of images before I see these improvements).

The gallery now supports photosphere viewing natively - as you would expect- but this also means you can pop over to Google Plus, search for "photosphere" and then download some of the best ones for immersive offline viewing. The feature is really great, and once you load an image it will begin a slow pan around the image, which you can pause and resume by tapping the screen once. Scroll around as you like.

You can also create the fun 'Tiny Planet' images with any created or downloaded 'spheres on your device.



Another of the big improvements to the gallery app is the advanced photo editing options.

Previously we have some options for tints and filters, which have now been added to with plenty more options, and the existing cropping, rotating and flipping tools have all had an upgrade.

For me as someone who posts images online I was really glad to see that the cropping tool now has an aspect ration option, so you can crop to a predefined ratio, like a perfect square, or a widescreen image, as well as keeping the original proportions or free-cropping.

The rotate tool is easier to use and the grid makes it simple to line up the horizon or other flat surfaces and get the perfect angle. The image will automatically be cropped at the native ratio to the maximum size the rotation can accommodate.

One more addition to the editing options that surprised me was the curves editor.

If you have ever done professional photo retouching, or just played with some of the more powerful options in Photoshop (or the free alternative the GIMP) will know the curves editor, and how hugely powerful it can be for fixing/improving all manner of elements of an image.




There are lots of online guides to using curves, so take a look there for some hints on usage, but just trust me here - this is a major gain for editing.

Clock (and the clock widget)

Firstly can I just say, the analogue clock widget on ICS and 4.1 Jelly Bean was HORRIBLE. Just a mess with angular lines and jaggy edges. Nasty.

I am happy to say that 4.2 replaces that with a minimalist, clean and high res clock that looks elegant and fits in with the OS much better.


But the analogue widget is but one aspect of the clock app, which has been substantially overhauled since it's last outing.


The fonts and styles for the digital clock have been poked about with, leaving the hour in bold and the minutes in a regular weight.

The app also features an alarm function, world clocks, and a countdown timer and stopwatch. All of which fit perfectly into the style of the OS and work well, while being easy to set and use, and clear to read.

This is much better than previous offerings which have been clunky or hard to use, and featured those tricky inertial scrolling wheels to set the times. Tapping in a number of a big old number pad may not show off your graphics, but when implemented in this way it certainly doesn't look bad.

Gesture keyboard

Another 'dot upgrade', another keyboard update.

The interface looks the same, but the processing has been tweaked again, improving the suggested words and prediction capibilities greatly over the keyboard offered in ICS (or way back in Gingerbread).
Google have also added something much called for - a gesture typing mode.
Basically they have ripped off Swype.


I had Swype installed on 4.1, but frankly Google's implementation or gestures, along with it tying in to the excellent predictions options (and voice typing if that's your thing) makes the stock keyboard the king again. I have now uninstalled all other keyboards. There is no need for them here.


To a certain extent I do feel sorry for Swype as I have been using the Beta versions of Swype on Android since May 2011 and have really enjoyed using it. But although Swype is no longer needed on 4.2 there will still be plenty of market for Swype on older or un-upgradable handsets for a while yet.

Daydream

One last feature is the somewhat irrelevant 'Daydream'. In effect this is a screensaver. For smartphones that's pretty much pointless as it keeps your screen on and drains your battery faster, however there is a little method to the madness - you can configure these (Through Settings > Display) to come on only when plugged in.
I am actually using the backlight-free clock Daydream, so I can see the time on my phone while charging overnight. Otherwise, I wouldn't bother with this.

Behind the Scenes:

Ok, well that's the main (and lesser-publicised) features covered, but there's still a little left to talk about. Namely: security, networking and performance.

Security

Finally Google have bundled an app-checker into the OS. They have been trying to clean up the malware-ridden reputation (mostly undeserved) of Android for a while, implementing a scanner into the Play Store back-end a while back and regularly filtering apps.




However, mostly the problems of malware come from third-party apps sideloaded onto people's phones (or pushed onto them from dodgy websites). This was not covered by Google's Play Store security upgrades, so now we have an equivalent silently running on our phones to protect us from scum and villainy.

A good thing indeed, but for now I would still recommend running Lookout or Avast! on an Android device, due to the extra features that they provide to protect you that Google have not yet rolled out.

Networking

This area is mostly limited to upgrades to the VPN options.

While most users don't even know about these options, VPNs have been natively supported in Android for a long while (as they are in iOS by the way). The one main problem we have was that if you are using a VPN to secure your connection and your Wifi (or mobile data) connection dropped, some the the data may send automatically unsecured once the connection is restored, but before the VPN has reinitialised.




Enter 'VPN Always On' - the answer to your data security woes. When turned on the option blocks any data transfers unless connected to the selected VPN.

Problem solved!

Truthfully I haven't got this to work yet as I only had a quick glance at it, but if implemented properly this should be just another bolt on the Android security door.




While mentioning VPN support, the 'advanced' options for the VPN are still a little limited. For example, no option to change the ports, but install OpenVPN for Android and you're set there anyway.

OpenVPN is free to install from the Play Store and once you have set up a VPN it ties in fully with the Android VPN settings.

Final thoughts

I'm sure it is quite obvious from the tone of this article that I am very much in favour of the Jelly Bean refresh.

I do see it as a full version update, although I can understand why some would be disappointed if this was named as such. The improvements are many, and certainly not minor.

I have had no issues with this, and the update has improved my phone greatly.




For anyone holding off on the update due to concerns about any bugs, my experience tells me that you have nothing to worry about. If you do experience any problems then you can be sure that they will be fixed in short order. Most of the glitches people report after an OTA update are fixed by fitting the 'Factory Reset' option in the Settings menu - but make sure you backup your data before you do that :)




All in all I am thrilled with Jelly Bean part 2 and I'm sure you will be too.

Enjoy!!