Every time Google announces a new version of
its Android mobile OS, every droid user out there starts asking - will
my smartphone get it? Well, we have some bad news for Sony Ericsson
phones regarding Android 4.1 Jelly Bean and worse still - LG cancelled
the ICS update for two of its phones.
Sony (actually, Sony Ericsson at the time) made sure to announce
early on that its 2011 Xperia lineup will be updated to Android 4.0 Ice
Cream Sandwich (even if the company wasn't so quick to actually deliver
the updates). And now is has revealed that the Xperia arc S and Xperia
mini pro won't be getting Jelly Bean.
This is coming from John Cooper, UK Product Manager for Sony Mobile,
and while he didn’t say anything about other models, they all use the
same chipset (with the arc S using an overclocked version). This means
it's more than likely that the entire 2011 lineup will be missing out on
the Android 4.1 JB fun.
As for the 2012 Xperia phones, Cooper says they're still reviewing
which handsets are "the best for the Jelly Bean update" and promised
Sony will announce its decision on Facebook once it figures it out.
No Jelly Bean sounds rough, but LG Canada had some worse news for
some of its users - no Ice Cream Sandwich update for the LG Optimus 2X
and Optimus Black. The LG Optimus 2X was expected to get Ice Cream
Sandwich in Q2 but got delayed to Q3 and the Optimus Black was originally scheduled for Q3.
Now it turns out that the ICS update for both phones has been
canceled - in Canada, at least. The statement doesn't make it entirely
clear if this is a country-specific thing or if all Optimus 2X and Black
phones will remain stuck on Gingerbread.
With last week's announcement that the highly revered HTC Desire HD
won't receive an official update to Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich
causing quite a stir, the Taiwanese company has posted the reasons for
the decision in its blog. The biggest issue according to HTC, has been
the risk of users losing their personal data during the update process.
Apparently, the larger size of Android ICS would require
repartitioning the handset's internal space and, therefore, cause the
abovementioned danger. HTC considered reducing the overall size of the
package, but came to the conclusion that such a move would impact the
phone's functionality, so, alas, the decision was taken to leave the
Desire HD in the land of Gingerbread.
Cast :Colin Farrell, Jessica Biel, Kate Beckinsale, Bryan Cranston, Bill NighyStory :As
the nation states Euromerica and New Shanghai vie for supremacy, a
factory worker begins to suspect that he's a spy, though he is unaware
which side of the fight he's on.
Cast :Kathryn McCormick, Ryan Guzman, Stephen BossStory :Emily
arrives in Miami with aspirations of becoming a professional dancer and
soon falls in love with Sean, a young man who leads a dance crew in
elaborate flash mobs, called The Mob. When a wealthy business man
threatens to develop The Mob's historic neighborhood and displace
thousandsof people, Emily must band together with Sean and The Mob to
turn their performance art into protest art, and risk losing their
dreams to fight for a greater cause.
Cast :Will Ferrell, Zach Galifianakis, Jason SudeikisStory :When
long-term congressman Cam Brady commits a major public gaffe before an
upcoming election, a pair of ultra-wealthy CEOs plot to put up a rival
candidate, nave Marty Huggins, and gain influence over their North
Carolina. With the help of his new benefactors' support, a cutthroat
campaign manager and his family's political connections, he soon becomes
a contender who gives Cam plenty to worry about. As Election Day closes
in, the two are locked in a dead heat, with insults quickly escalating
to injury until all they care about is burying each other, in this
mud-slinging, back-stabbing, home-wrecking comedy that takes today's
political circus to its logical next level. Because even when you think
campaign ethics have hit rock bottom, there's room to dig a whole lot
deeper.
Cast :Hugh Grant, Salma Hayek, Jeremy PivenStory :In
The Pirates! Band of Misfits, Hugh Grant stars in his first animated
role as the luxuriantly bearded Pirate Captain a boundlessly
enthusiastic, if somewhat less-than-successful, terror of the High Seas.
With a rag-tag crew at his side (Martin Freeman, Brendan Gleeson,
Russell Tovey, and Ashley Jensen), and seemingly blind to the impossible
odds stacked against him, the Captain has one dream: to beat his bitter
rivals Black Bellamy (Jeremy Piven) and Cutlass Liz (Salma Hayek) to
the much coveted Pirate Of The Year Award. Its a quest that takes our
heroes from the shores of exotic Blood Island to the foggy streets of
Victorian London. Along the way they battle a diabolical queen (Imelda
Staunton) and team up with a haplessly smitten young scientist (David
Tennant), but never lose sight of what a pirate loves best: adventure!
Cast :Arnold Schwarzenegger, Bruce Willis, Sylvester Stallone, Liam Hemsworth, Jean-Claude Van Damme, Chuck Norris, Jet LiStory :The
Expendables are back and this time it's personal! After Tool (Mickey
Rourke), the heart and soul of the Expendables, is brutally murdered on a
mission, his comrades swear to avenge him. They're not the only ones
who want blood. Tools beautiful young and wild daughter Fiona embarks on
her own revenge mission, complicating matters when she is captured and
ransomed by a ruthless dictator plotting to destroy a resistance
movement. Now Barney and the Expendables must risk everything to save
her and humanity.
Cast :Adam Sandler, Leighton MeesterStory :While
still in his teens, Donny (Adam Sandler) fathered a son, Todd (Andy
Samberg), and raised him as a single parent up until Todd's 18th
birthday. Now, after not seeing each other for years, Todd's world comes
crashing down on the eve of his wedding when an uninvited Donny
suddenly shows up. Trying desperately to reconnect with his son, Donny
is now forced to deal with the repercussions of his bad parenting
skills.
Cast :Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Jamie Chung, Michael ShannonStory :The
film centers on a New York City bicycle messenger (Joseph
Gordon-Levitt) who picks up an envelope from Columbia University. A
dirty cop (Michael Shannon), desperate to get his hands on the envelope,
chases the bicycle messenger around the city.
Cast :Thomas Mann, Jonathan Daniel Brown, Dax FlameStory :Project
X is an out-of-control comedy that follows a group of buds who set out
to throw the most epic 17th birthday party ever. The film documents a
high school party that gets completely out of control, shot from the
perspective of the digital cameras that the kids have with them.
Cast :Sunny Leone, Imran Zahid, Randeep Hooda, Arunoday SinghStory :A
porn star is hired by a dashing intelligence officer to become a
'Honey-trap' for a dreaded assassin. In doing so, she not only has to
confront her bitter-sweet past, but is also forced to make an impossible
choice - one that will put her own life in double jeopardy.
Cast :Aditya Samanta, Nazia HussainStory :Yeh
Jo Mohabbat Hai is a dramatic love story of two young people who are
caught between love for each other and the generations old enmity
between their respective Rajput families. The film begins with the birth
of Karishma and Karan on the same day in the same hospital. 23 years
later, unknown of their family backgrounds, they meet each other one
summer at Krakow University Poland and fall in love. When Karan finds
out her family background, he starts avoiding Karishma. What happens
thereafter is a succession of interesting events that you would get to
see in this musical extravaganza.
Cast :Sharad Malhotra, Bidita Bag, Prateek Chakravorty, Evelyn Sharma, Karan Sagoo, Reshmi GhoshStory :It
was a dream come true for Meghaa Banerjee, a small town girl in West
Bengal, India when she earned a scholarship from the prestigious
University of New South Wales in Australia to pursue her Masters degree
in Economics with inevitable butterflies in her stomach.She embarks upon
her maiden expedition to Sydney leaving her protective shell and family
behind. Coming from a conservative middle class background, life and
culture in Sydney was an instant eye opener for her. Under guidance of
her caring cousin Kalpana fondly called Kol, Meghaa slowly embraces her
new life in Sydney where she makes new set of friends, which includes
cherubic Lubaina, prankster Raj, and narcissistic Suhail. Love and
romance was something that was strictly not in her agenda of things.
However being young at heart it was just something waiting to happen to
her when she met Rohit a charismatic, full of sheen and friendly
natured fellow student in the University with whom she starts gelling
right from the word go. What happens thereafter is something to watch
out in this fun, quirky, emotional and furiously endearing love story
set across two hemispheres in the entertainment extravaganza called From
Sydney with Love.
Cast :Om Puri, Juhi Chawla, Manoj Bajpai, Anupam KherStory :The
movie is based on Lord Krishna's growing up through the tyranny of his
uncle Kans. Lord Krishna battles with demons, miracles, adventures
throughout his childhood. Lord Krishna's motive of destroying the evil
and ending his evil uncle Kans's tyranny.
Cast :Aakar Kaushik, Manish Nawani, Alok Kumar, Vijay PrateekStory :Shuttlecock
Boys revolves around the lives, successes and failures of four friends
who hail from lower middle class backgrounds in Delhi. Should we accept
what life offers to us on a platter or should we try to chase our
dreams, taking the path less taken? Thats the question our protagonists
Gaurav, Manav, Pankaj and Loveleen seek answer to, as they decide to
embark upon an eventful journey that will change the course of their
lives and careers forever.
Cast :Juhi Chawla, Rajneesh Duggal KaranStory :Main
Krishna Hoon is about Krishna who meets Lord Krishna. It is an
inspirational story for those children who have no ray of hope in their
dark life.
Cast :Meera, Abhishek Kumar, Shahwar Ali, Ranjeet, Charanpal Singh, Nassar AbdullaStory :It
is the story of chartered accountant Vikram and his keep Soniya who are
waiting for another accountant Muqaadam to deliver 5 crores hard cash
at their farm house. Vikram works for Sultan Corporation which is owned
by Sultan. As soon as Muqaadam delivers the money, Vikram and Sonia plan
to kill Muqaadam and escape to Singapore next day with 5 crores to
start a new life. Vikram and Soniya go exactly by their plan. Enter
Karan Oberoi whose car breaks down in front of Vikram's Farm House.
Karan also happens to be Soniya's junior ex classmate in her college.
Muqaadam's Girlfriend Reshma, an ex exotic dancer who is waiting for
Muqaadam to return, plans to take matter into her own hands. This is
where the dirty game of love, betrayal, murder and deceit begins.
Cast :Salman Khan, Katrina KaifStory :A
scientist from Trinity College is suspected of being involved in the
selling of missile technology to Pakistan. Indian government decides to
send out their secret agent, codenamed Tiger, to check if the
allegations are correct or not. During his mission, Tiger falls for the
professors caretaker Zoya, and this is when the two embark on a
rollercoaster journey that begins from Dublin and takes them to
different cities of the world.
What's remarkable
about India's mobile story is the way it is changing our online
experience. "On the go" is no longer a niche phrase. Accessing emails
and replying to them used to be the preserve of BlackBerry owners once upon a time. Today you can do that from any mobile phone.
Look at the Facebook Timeline.
The "status messages" indicating "what's on your mind" have dwindled to
a minimum. There are now more photographs and videos. And, importantly,
a lot of them are uploaded on the go by users from their smartphones.
On an average, an online Indian has at least two devices. A huge
majority -- as many as 72% -- of them have at least one mobile phone,
and 48% of them access internet
on the mobile, says Norton's annual Mobile Survey released last week.
And what do they reach out to the web for? Sixty per cent of them to
network with social circles, 44% to read news and 42% for online
messaging.
Other studies also indicate a similar trend. Global
Information research shows users spend on an average of 35 to 40 minutes
daily on either business-related networking or social media sites. A
Pew Research Centre study notes that there is a new form of video journalism emerging on Youtube as more people upload and view "witness videos" in times of events like earthquake, flood, accident etc.
As we get more networked, there's also more data in cyberspace. But
that may not mean we are all better informed, since there's a limit to
the amount of data our brain can perceive, analyse and retain. What we
know, and how much we know, will naturally depend on what and how we
consume data online.
Most of us are quite disorganized online —
we drift from email to Twitter or Facebook to umpteen webpages, guided
merely by the weblinks we see. We surf along without much purpose,
gathering some random information that may interest us, but not what we
may necessarily need to know.
As mobile internet explodes into
the next phase, we will need to be more selective and organized by
making more use of customization and filter tools on emails and social
networking sites. That's the only way to make the best use of the
infinite terabytes of data floating on cyberspace.
LONDON: Heading for London Olympics with your smartphone? You may enjoy internet service without shelling out money, as a free Wi-Fi service has been launched for the extravaganza.
A deal between Westminster City Council and a leading network provider
will give free Wi-Fi services to users in Central London during the
Olympics and much after it gets over, the BBC reported.
The
network will initially cover Oxford Street, Regent Street, Trafalgar
Square, Leicester Square, Piccadilly Circus and Parliament Square. Other
areas will be covered eventually, with Covent Garden next.
The
deal between Westminster City Council and UK's leading network provider
O2 will make WiFi services available to all internet users free of cost
with downloads upto 24 Mbit/s, regardless of their current provider, in
central London's West End.
Councillor Philippa Roe, leader of
Westminster Council, said the free Wi-Fi was part of a "long term
project to help make London one of the most technology-friendly cities
in the world."
The project funded by O2 will make use targeted advertising to recover the costs.
Internet users will get to use the free services after completing a
single registration process. Unlike other service providers, O2 hotspots
will remain free even after the Olympics have ended.
By the
end of July, 80 London Underground stations will have Wi-Fi access, but
this will only be free for the duration of the Olympic and Paralympic
Games.
SAN FRANCISCO: Microsoft announced that its next-generation operating
system tailored for a world shifting from personal computers to
smartphones and tablets will be available on October 26.
Windows unit boss Steven Sinofsky revealed the Windows 8 debut date at a sales meeting, Microsoft communications manager Brandon LeBlanc said in a blog post yesterday(Jul 18, 2012).
Windows 8 will be available in 109 languages across 231 markets worldwide, according to LeBlanc.
Microsoft has promised to make the new operating system available in
August for computer, tablet or smartphone makers to build into hardware.
It "is simply the biggest deal for this company in at least 17 years,"
Microsoft chief Steve Ballmer said last week, referring to the time
since the launch of the game-changing Windows 95 operating system.
"It's the glue; it's the foundation of everything Microsoft is built on."
Microsoft reported that it has sold more than 630 million licenses of
Windows 7, and that the software powers the majority of business desktop
computers.
Windows 7
went public in October 2009. The latest version of the operating system
that is the norm for personal computers will also be used on many
smartphones and tablet computers, including Microsoft's own Surface
tablet to be launched this year.
The Redmond, Washington-based
firm has gone on record stating that Surface tablets would hit the
market when the Windows 8 operating system became publicly available.
Windows 8 allows users readily to store and share personal data among
various devices under the "SkyDrive" cloud computing service.
Rivals Apple and Google offer such services, which let people store
digital data on servers in the Internet "cloud" and access files from
devices of their choosing.
The new Microsoft system will support a
wider range of devices, including touch and stylus-based smartphones
and tablet PCs as well as desktop and laptop machines. Versions of
Windows 8 have been tailored for chips used to power various mobile
devices.
The software giant has been trying to expand its
presence in the booming market for smartphones and tablets, which is
currently dominated by Apple and Google.
The lucky geeks at Engadget got their hands on a Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 Pro MDP
(Mobile Developer Platform) and managed to run several benchmarks on
it. The Snapdragon S4 Pro chipset in question is APQ8064 - with a
quad-core Krait processor and Adreno 320 GPU. It should come as no
surprise then that it managed to beat current chipsets quite easily.
Krait is a newer architecture than Cortex-A9 (which powers the likes
of Tegra 3 and Exynos 4 Quad chipsets) and even dual-core Kraits usually
come close to quad-core A9's in tests. The brand new Adreno GPU turned
out quite powerful too - it's a new design compared to the 2xx series.
Here are the benchmark results obtained:
The processor offers double the performance of a dual-core Krait CPU
according to CF-Bench (no surprise here) and a big improvement on the
quad-core Cortex-A9 chipsets. The SunSpider results also improved even
though JavaScript isn't exactly multicore-friendly.
GLBenchmark shows GPU performance has more than doubled since Adreno
225 and easily beats Tegra 3's GeForce GPU. The Mali-400MP in the Exynos
chipset comes closer, but is still over 30fps behind.
Those are some very impressive results, but it will be a while before
we see the beastly chipest inside a consumer product. S4 Pro chipsets
will probably debut on tablets, seeing how every major smartphone maker
has already unveiled its flagship phone (besides Apple, but they’ll use
their own design anyway).
Google used its I/O 2012 conference in San Francisco to unveil the
latest release of Android. Carrying the version number 4.1, the new
Android Jelly Bean is supposed to come as more of a polish to Ice Cream
Sandwich, than a major game changer.
Don't think for a second though, that Jelly Bean doesn't have
anything interesting to offer. On the contrary - the latest Android
version brings a truckload of new features, and should help noticeably
improve the overall user experience. Here goes the full breakdown:
Android 4.1 Jelly Bean changelog:
Project Butter has brought smoother and faster feeling user interface
Improved notification center with expandable and actionable notifications
Updated widget behavior
Improved camera and gallery apps for easy photo snapping and sharing
Improved keyboard behavior with with word prediction
Added Accessibility options with support for external Braille input
Enhanced Android Beam allowing transfer of photos and video
Offline Voice recognition and typing
Google Voice search is more intelligent than ever
Updated Google Search user interface
Google Now adds automatic information feeds to your device (weather, traffic, sports, etc)
Bi-Directional text and additional language support
Truly high-resolution contact photos
USB audio output and HDMI multichannel audio output
App encryption and Smart App updates
The list might not be too long, but Android ICS was arguably the most
feature-rich platform already, so major changes were hardly required.
With Android easily the most popular mobile OS out there, Jelly Bean's
task is to solidify its lead by polishing the user experience.
The Project Butter sounds like a great start, but it's certainly not
the only trick up Jelly Bean's sleeve. The revamped notification center,
the updated widgets and the new natural language searches should really
make a difference to end users, while the improved Android SDK and
extended API support should keep developers happy.
User interface
Android 4.1 Jelly Bean sticks to the foundation laid by Ice Cream
Sandwich more than half a year ago. There are very few visual user
interface changes, but some cool added functionality. Of course, as with
every previous Android release, the bootscreen animation has also been
updated.
Project Butter
Project Butter is Google's answer to the oft-criticized Android user
interface stutters and is probably the most important new feature of
Android Jelly Bean. Cool animations have been an integral part of
Android for quite some time now, but the problem was that they weren't
always perfectly smooth. Even really powerful smartphones and tablets
were guilty of the lagging occasionally and it was about time Google did
something about it.
In fact, Google has worked so hard on these performance optimizations
that it even borrowed the services of a high-speed RED camera to record
the improvements throughout the UI. Check it out.
To get the interface so fluid and smooth, Google has made Jelly
Bean's UI run at 60 frames per second where the hardware allows it.
Since software engineers didn't stop there, they also added triple
buffering (CPU, GPU and display working in parallel, not waiting in
turns).
Finally, there's the feature called Touch responsiveness, which
makes your phone anticipate and predict where your finger will be on the
screen next and preloads any animations it might need to display when
you start touching the screen.
The result, as you saw in the video above is an interface you can safely call "smooth as butter".
Lockscreen
The lockscreen for example is altered and now shows a large dotted
circle around the center-placed unlock button. You still the two
familiar shortcuts - move the unlock button to the left for camera, and
right for unlock. There's a new, third icon above them for jumping to
Google Voice Search.
We still feel Google isn't utilizing the lockscreen to its fullest,
though. A small weather widget would've come in handy, or even a short
calendar snippet showing the upcoming appointments. We've seen those in
some of the custom launchers, but it would be great if they were backed
into the OS itself. The refreshed user interface of Jelly Bean feels familiar
Enhanced notification center
One of the best bits about Jelly Bean is its revamped notification
center. It features a redesigned clock and date icons on the top left
followed by a larger settings icon. The clear notifications icon has
also been refreshed and it looks much sharper now.
The updates here don't end with the looks, either. Select app
notifications have gotten really smart, not only delivering you the
notification, but also providing you with several options for
interaction. The all new notification drawer
For example, you can snooze a reminder for an upcoming meeting or
email its guests right from the notification area. This is quite
convenient, saving you a few seconds from the time you'd normally spend
tapping your way through the app to get the same thing done.
Next, you can answer or hang up a call right from the notification
blind. Yes, this feature was present in previous Android releases too,
but now it's icons have been redesigned don't feel out of place.
Finally, starting with Jelly Bean, you can view photos shared with
you on Google+ or even read your incoming messages without even having
to enter the Messaging app.
Resizable and self-aware app widgets
Ice Cream Sandwich introduced resizable widgets, and they have been
further improved in Android 4.1 Jelly Bean. With the latest release of
the Google OS widgets will automatically adjust their size to fit on
the screen where you'd want to put. Widgets now automatically readjust their size to fit on the selected screen
This means that if you place a widget in an icon-congested screen,
the widget will contract to fit in whatever gap is available for it.
Also, if you drag one widget on top of the other, it will make space
for itself by forcing the icons underneath to rearrange.
Google Now
Google Now is definitely one of the most interesting of the Jelly
Bean novelties. To put it simply, it's Google's version of Siri, but it
learns constantly about you from your daily routines. The weather sites
you look at, the news and videos you watch in the morning and the routes
and calendar appointments you create daily - Google Now uses them to
give you provide better, more accurate results to your searches. Google Now in action
The service interacts with you by generating cards, which gives you
short overview of information it believes is relevant to you right now.
Going to work in the morning? Google Now knows this and lets you know
there's a big traffic jam on your usual way to the office, so it offers
you a re-route.
It can interpret a lot of things from your search history as well. If
you've been searching for, let's say, your favorite football team,
Google Now will prepare a card showing you the next match the team is
playing and will provide you score updates once the game begins.
Check out its promo video:
Sounds creepy at first, but could prove to be really handy
eventually. It interacts really nice with Google's new Voice search,
too.
Google Voice Search
Naturally, search is where Google excels. And with its enhanced looks
and heavily updated Voice search, it gives Siri a run for its money.
Now you can ask Google everything you want to know in natural human
language. "What's the tallest building in the world?" would bring you a
cool looking card carrying the answer and an photo of Burj Khalifa. To
top things off, Google's Voice Search assistant will read the answer to
you, so you don't even need to look at the screen. Google Voice Search
It's not witchcraft this Google Voice Search. It utilizes the
company's Knowledge Graph to gather the snippets of information needed
to give you a satisfying answer. That's certainly bringing us a step
closer to a more advanced virtual personal assistants, but just like the
competition, Google's assistant need to go a long way before it becomes
useful for daily tasks.
Offline Voice typing and a new smart Keyboard
Voice typing now works offline. To make it happen, Google has baked
the voice recognition algorithms needed to make it run into Android
itself. Not only does this make Voice typing faster, but also eliminates
the need for internet connection.
With Jelly Bean, the Android keyboard's nuts and bolts got updated as
well. It now features smarter dictionary algorithms and the more you
write, the better it can predict your words as it's learning algorithms
let it unveil its full potential. Offline Voice typing comes in handy at times
So for example if frequently write "I am going home, see you in 15
minutes", the dictionary will be able to predict words and phrases like
"home" and "15 minutes". It resembles Swiftkey's smart dictionary
system, but only time will tell if it performs as well.
Truly HD contact photos
Ice Cream Sandwich introduced the updated People app, which boasted a
cool looking large contact pictures. They looked great on the Google
demos, but once users got to test them, they weren't quite as
impressive.
That's because Google was using the contact photos from Gmail, which
were limited top 96x96 pixels. Put simply, they looked terrible on the
HD display of the Galaxy Nexus.
Fortunately, Google got around to fixing them in Jelly Bean by
increasing the maximum possible resolution to 720x720 pixels. This may
not sound like much, but it was a major eye sore that accompanied every
call. Jessica Alba deserves an HD contact photo and Jelly Bean finally allows it
Updated Camera app
The camera app is a bit nicer to look at and somewhat more intuitive
in Jelly Bean. When you snap a photo, it flies sideways from the
viewfinder and into the gallery. You can then do a finger swipe to
follow it and review your recently captured images.
Yes it works just like on Windows Phone, but there's some extra
functionality. Once you are in the gallery, you can pinch-zoom out and
view your photos in a card-like interface, which lets you delete some of
them with simple upwards swipes. As cool and easy as it gets. Deleting your gallery images
And don't worry - if you delete something by mistake, you can always bring it back by tapping the undo button.
Google Maps offline
Google unveiled its updated Maps app at a special event
and now all the goodies are available to Android users as well. A new
addition is the inclusion of a 'Save for offline view' button, allowing
you to precache whole cities into your phone. Previously, it was only
available as a Labs feature.
Mind you the feature is available in select regions only so your mileage with it will vary depending where you are in the world.
Android Beam shares more
The Android Beam service which came along with Android ICS allowed
users to share small bits of information through NFC. Contacts, links,
calendar events and addresses could be shared via NFC, but now Jelly
Bean brings support for even more content. Android Beam has been updated as well
By leveraging on the Bluetooth connectivity, which virtually every
Android smartphone has, Jelly Bean allows you to share photos and videos
with a simple NFC-enabled tap. You can even use Android Beam to pair
with Bluetooth devices (via NFC) like speakers, headsets and other
gadgets.
Conclusion
After spending a day with it, we feel Jelly Bean is exactly what its
version number suggests - a significant update to ICS, but by far not
the largest one Android has seen.
Jelly Bean smooths things up, cleans up a lot of bugs, brings a
bit of cool new functionality here and there, but doesn't make you
scratch your head and feel lost. It's enough to make the ICS users happy
with the update, without giving JB owners too many boasting rights.
Google's Voice search and Now service look cool for now, but have yet
to prove themselves as the useful companions Google says they are. We
are far from convinced that those virtual assistants are worth the
effort going into their development, but with all the big players so
keen to invest in them, there might be something about them after all.
More importantly, Jelly Bean finally gives Android the smooth feeling
of its rivaling platforms. Even on moderately powerful hardware such as
the one on the Samsung Galaxy Nexus, Android now has much smoother and
faster animations and a bit more fluid navigation.
In a way Google felt so comfortable about Android's lead in
functionality that it thought, it might ease off the gas a bit and focus
on optimizations for a while. With the platform pretty mature as it is,
now seems like as good a time as any to fix those remaining performance
issues.
The only thing seemingly missing now is a cure for the
fragmentation issue, which is still keeping some developers away from
the platform. A little over than 9 months ago, Google unveiled Ice Cream
Sandwich and now as it's successor came to live Android 4.0 is powering
just over 7% percent of all Android devices out there.
We'll now probably be treated to several months of rumors and
contradicting statements from Google's partners before any updates
actually make it to the market. We are still hoping, though that the
step from ICS to Jelly Bean will be an easier one to make and Android
4.1 won't share the fate of its predecessor - becoming obsolete before
even becoming the second most popular Android release.
LG Canada
Cast :Jeremy Renner, Rachel Weisz, Edward Norton Story :