I read this week that some Android devices were getting the update to Android 4.1, also known as Jelly Bean to those numerically impaired people like Google engineers. Let’s refer to Google engineers as Jelly Beans, shall we?
Last night I did a manual update check in the Settings app on my Asus Transformer Prime. At first it said no update available, then changed to update available. I selected the update option, and it immediately started to download, and stalled out at 7%. And there it stayed for an extended period of time, so I left it overnight. And I completed the reboot and upgrade this morning.
The latest version is now 4.1.1. And my first reaction after using the tablet few a few minutes is…big deal! Sarcasm intended. Like most Android upgrades, it’s all media hype and little user experience improvement. Very small cosmetic changes, feels the same over all to this user, on this fast tablet.
The most noticeable change was the Asus Weather widget (powered by AccuWeather) stopped working. It’s a typical main widget on the home screen when you buy this Asus tablet. I went into the settings and it wouldn’t update, last update 2010. The device didn’t exist in 2010. So I switched from it guessing my location to me hard selecting the location, still no luck. I switched it back and forth a few times and refreshed the data a dozen times and it finally started working again…for the moment. Could be a glitch with AccuWeather with bad timing, but I’ll blame the Jelly Beans for now.
Another new feature in 4.1 is a new search app. It wanted to download and install right after the upgrade. I installed it like a good little sheep user and it immediately advertised some other Google app called Google Now at start up. And in portrait mode only. It would not switch to the standard tablet view we know as landscape. So after selecting “Next” several times and “Not right now” to this Now thing app I know nothing about (I thought I was installing Search) it finally would switch back to landscape mode. Obviously the Jelly Bean that created that feature advertisement only owns a phone he holds in portrait mode when testing. BTW the app is simply called Google once installed, not Search or Google Search, so I thought that is interesting. Propagating the company name as the verb we use for search, and not the English language. I somehow take offence to this, plus I had trouble finding it in the app list after installing, as I was looking for Search or Google Search as they called it before and during install. I find Google conically inconsistent.
Overall there is not a lot that is shockingly new. A decent incremental upgrade I’m sure, but that’s all it is. No massive or earth shaking changes to a tablet user that was using 4.0.x. I suppose once again my biggest complaint is all the hype that most media people that drank the coolaid have touted about Jelly Bean 4.1. If it was a silent update I may not have even noticed for a while till I finally saw Waldo in the background…I mean a small graphic change to the notification list.
I do want to see Android continually improve, what I don’t want to see is over-hyped reports of imagined improvements. Keep it real, put the cup down.
