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Along with a slew of new Nexus devices, Google has just announced Android 4.2, a new flavour of Jellybean. While it doesn’t get a new name of its own, it does get quite a few neat new features. Here’s a rundown.
The new version of Android will include a new keyboard feature that allows for swipey-style typing, much like Swype, and the upcoming Flow for SwiftKey.
4.2 will support Miracast, an AirPlay-like service. This means you’ll be able to stream YouTube videos, movies, TV, and anything that’s on your tablet screen to an HDTV if you have a wireless display adapter. Who needs a Nexus Q, right?
Just like your laptop, 4.2 devices will now be able to support multiple user logins. Each user can have their own homescreen, background, widgets, apps, and games. It even keeps things like game-save progress and high-scores separate. 4.2 will also use multi-tasking to keep things running in the background to make swapping users snappy.
Like a beefed-up panaromic camera, Photo Sphere will let users do exactly what the name implies: take spherical photos. You can even add these spheres to Google Maps, which could have some pretty cool results.
The Daydream feature is a system that will let your device show off useful (or amusing) information when idle or docked. It seems that it’ll operating in a smart, Google Now-ish sort of way, and can show things like photo albums, news from Google Currents, and more.
Certain Android 4.2 notifications will now let you take appropriate actions directly from the notifications pane. We don’t know exactly what notifications will support this yet, but the example Google gives is returning a missed call directly from the notification.
Jelly Bean now supports a triple-tap to zoom in on small text, or anything else you need a closer look at. After you’re zoomed in, you can pan around with a two-fingered touch. There’s also Gesture mode for blind users, which uses touch and swipe gestures along speech output to make it possible to navigate the UI without having to see it.
Google Now can now pull from Gmail to get ideas for new cards. It can also help you track packages, scout out movie information, and even help you find great spots for photo-ops based on your location. [Google]
when you say “a slew of nexus devices” did you mean different variations of the nexus 4 (16gb and 32gb)?
Nexus 4, Nexus 10, refreshed Nexus 7.
thanks for clearing that up, seeing as the link only showed the nexus 4.
Don’t mean to start a flame war here or anything, but doesnt MS hold Multi user account and fast switching patents? May be wrong but i remember reading something about them ages ago.
Depends on how they have implemented it I guess
I too read that MS hold the patent, but just because someone owns the patent, doesn’t mean they can’t use it. For all we know, MS and Android have done some patent swapping.
As long as you have paid for or have the permission of whoever holds the patents, you can use them.
Considering multiple user accounts have been a concept since the 60′s, and I seem to remember fast-user switching in the 80′s, those patents can only be on a particular way of implementing it, or are invalid. I’m pretty sure Android will be doing it differently, Google has gone out of their way to work around many Apple patents like the (now possibly invalid) bounce-back scrolling. That said, I’d give even-money that it’s also in the patent portfolio that MS has been extorting payments for from Android manufacturers.
they use it in their chrome books so it shouldnt be an issue.
not that much in the way of amazing new features really, nothing that makes me desperate to switch up as soon as it comes out
Can anyone confirm if the Nexus 7 supports the Miracast function? That would be awesome!