Gadgetory

all signs are pointing to jellybean as being a point release what is that and what does it mean for Android this is pocket now I'm Joe Levi that's what we're going to talk about on today's episode of the android guy weekly way back to the early days google has listed their operating system iterations well as nice tasty desserts versions a and B kind of broke that model but see was cupcake and well after that it was all downhill the next version after the current version which is of course Ice Cream Sandwich version 4.0 has been rumored to be jelly bean now Google's let that name slip a little bit so we're pretty confident that that's ultimately what the next version of android is going to be called but what version is it we think that it might be four point something some people thought it might be five point oh well what's the difference first and foremost by all accounts it looks like it's going to be Android version 4.1 yes jelly bean we're putting our money down on 4.1 why is that well google released their galaxy nexus phone in the Google Play Store so you could buy it directly from them which first of all that's really cool we're glad they brought that back as you used to be able to do that with the nexus one back before it was called the Play Store now they're doing it with the Galaxy Nexus they let something slip though just last week when looking at the description for the phone online it said that this was the first version of the phone that was going to get the next version of android version 4.1 and they listed jellybean by name so we're pretty sure it's going to be called jelly bean and we're pretty sure it's going to be version 4.1 they pulled down that description relatively quickly those screenshots do exist indicating that that's probably what Google's go to be doing also means that the nexus is probably going to be the first phone to get it and it's probably going to be relatively soon so if we take all of those assumptions which at this point they are they're pretty well founded assumptions but if we take all those assumptions what does it mean what is a point release and what does that mean for Android well for a point release we've got to look back to software development hey and we're going to do this in the context of Android the operating system all along the way we've had really minor versions with a couple major versions now what's a minor and a major version major versions are full versions so version 12 version to version to version 3 version 3 diversion for version for diversion 5 those are major revisions sometimes they're not all that in major as far as what they include but that's what they're called minor revisions are sometimes called point revisions sometimes minor revisions are called something else but will kind of column synonymous for the purpose of this video a point revision is simply that we're going from version 2.0 to 2.1 or 2.1 to 2.2 generally speaking in software development just in general point revisions are bug fixes they are suffering modifications to add stability to correct errors they usually don't add many new features well all one has to do is look back at the history of Android to realize that's not the case for Android because we get lots of new features and functionality with point revisions now we're going to call them minor revisions next and that's sub-point revisions so for example right now on my galaxy nexus i'm running version 4.0 point for so Google usually does bug fixes in the minor revisions in the sub point revisions I'm still running Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich it's just version zero point or of that make sense all right so we kind of have some terminology down and under our belts we kind of know where Google breaks with the standard as far as naming goes so what do we expect we're going to get with Android jelly bean which is probably going to be Android version 4.1 if we think back to froyo and gingerbread which really want that long ago a lot of you guys are still running one of those versions of Android there's not a lot of differences between the two but the difference that are there are some of them are subtle some of them are a bit more grandiose some of them are a lot more important but they're still very close to one another at least from a development standpoint a developer doesn't have to do much different to get their stuff to be optimized for Gingerbread versus just running on an optimized for Froyo but runs on gingerbread make sense so we expect the same things going to be happening with Android jelly bean again hopefully version 4.1 if it's not this video is going to become really irrelevant really fast isn't it we'll cross that bridge when we come to it but I'm putting my money down on 4.1 so what does that mean what are we going to get recently we have seen a lot of improvement with Google Maps well we've seen it we just haven't been able to experience it Google Maps has this really cool new 3d building texture trees landscape topography thing we've seen it in their videos but we really haven't seen it on any devices yet they had a press release that showed us how cool it was and holy crap it's cool imagine flying over taking multiple shots of an area and using a really sophisticated algorithm patching those flat two-dimensional images together into a three-dimensional model and then painting the two-dimensional images with the appropriate stretches and skews to handle the three-dimensional three dimensionality wow that's really hard to say painting that over the sides of the 3d model sounds awesome and in fact it is everything that we've seen so far looks amazing but we haven't been able to play with it in hand why is that probably because they're waiting for their next major conference to come out so they can announce it give us an early release look at you know just to the people who are there maybe hopefully to us out in the industry as well so we can get some videos and show you the cool stuff will let you know on that but I suspect that is going to be built in to android version 4.1 or at the very least exclusively released to Android 4.1 initially and then it will be built back into older versions now why is that I suspect their stuff inside Android for one that enables some of this more high-end 3d stuff with less lag and and more fluidity that's going to make the whole experience in the new Google Maps a lot nicer but of course that's not in downlevel versions of Android so they don't want to release it down level versions of Android because the experience would be less than ideal again just my assumption I don't know that for sure but I kind of suspect it what other stuff well of course we're going to get incremental improvements we're going to see things getting just more polish smoother and all around better do we have any more specifics about what's coming in Android jelly bean I certainly don't that's what I'd like to turn it over to you what have you heard might be included in Android jelly bean what would you like to be in Android jelly bean and what are some things that you want to see Google avoid with Android jelly bean some mistakes that they may have made in the past I'd like to hear from you head over to pocketnow.com and leave your comment down at the bottom of the article so we can all kind of get a feel for what everybody thinks is coming what everybody wants to be coming that's the best part of this whole thing at least in my opinion is hearing from you guys the audience it's awesome you open up my eyes so many different things and thank you for it for pocket now musing about android 4.1 and jelly bean I'm Joe Levi