Android 4.1 Jelly Bean preview

Today at I/O 2012, Google officially announced Android 4.1 Jelly Bean, the latest version of its mobile OS. Check the video preview after the break.

Project Butter is the major new innovation in Android 4.1 Jelly Bean, making the entire UI fast, fluid and smooth. The entire interface runs at 60 frames per second and animations are smoother and quicker.

The other big thing is power efficiency. Jelly Bean now dials the CPU back to lower frequency when it’s not in use.

Jelly Bean comes with an improved Google Voice Search, now spoken by a much more human-sounding voice compared to Siri and S Voice.

The home screen has also been tweaked, adding some nice features like dynamically resizing widgets, widgets that will now automatically resize as you move them across screens.

Notifications get a major revamp with expanded Gmail notifications, multiple notification sizes, and actions to allow you to interact with apps straight from the notification display without needing to open the relevant app.

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