Gadgetory

it was only last October that google introduced android 4.0 sandwich but time never stands still at the google sweet shop because here comes android 4.1 jelly bean I'm jessica's all cord for Cena with a first look at jelly bean running on the Samsung Galaxy Nexus here are the highlights first google has sped up the entire operating system so that everything loads a little bit faster and a little bit smoother here I'm comparing it to a Galaxy Nexus running Android 4.0 now if you like widgets then you're going to love that certain ones are now resizable as long as you have space for them on any given home screen I also really love what Google is doing to enrich the notifications bar now when someone emails you when you miss a call when you take a screenshot you get a google plus photo and so on you'll be able to get more information about whatever the item is in the notification shade you'll also be able to interact with it from there and as usual you can swipe it away when you're done google has done a lot of work with voice and keyboard search it's jazzed up voice actions with a completely revamped search step that you can now pull up from the home button on the bottom you can ask a range of questions like Google when was a retha Franklin born show me images of kittens sometimes you'll get a card with the answers and other times you'll get web search results you can also voice navigate to a location search nearby and so on but possibly the most useful new feature is Google now which is connected to the google voice app it can do things like automatically estimate your commute times check your flight times and present sports scores for your favorite teams it knows your favorite teams because you have searched for them the way it works is that Google will periodically check your GPS coordinates and calendar to see where you are learn your commute and discern when you're traveling since I just got this phone I haven't actually had a lot of time to test out those features but they do sound really useful in a vaguely creepy sort of way another aspect of voice is offline typing so if you're somewhere where you can't get online you can still dictate a message or email it works pretty well i am now dictating an email message from the train and I have absolutely no Wi-Fi connectivity and no data connection either period the new google play it brings magazine subscriptions movie purchases and TV episodes you can download all the content for offline viewing which is awesome for my daily train commute google currents similarly shows content like cnet headline news for example and it's in a swipeable magazine style that looks really good moving on to the camera app jellybean now lets you swipe to see your recently shot photos and if you pinch a picture you'll get a smaller film strip that you can swipe through you can also swipe away a photo to delete it and you can undo that if you change your mind the last feature i'm going to show you is another terrific addition Android Beam is now expanding to also let you share larger content like photos and videos from one compatible phone to another that's in addition to urls Maps contact information and all the other stuff you could already share with being believe it or not there's even more going on in android 4.1 jelly bean so make sure that you check out seeing its full review for all the details I'm jessica's all court and you're watching cnet TV you