Android 4.1: Jellybean OS Bijaya Maharjan, Sahan Maharjan, Subash Adhikari

Nepal College of Information Technology, Pokhara University

Balkumari, Lalitpur, Nepal

erbijayamaharjan@gmail.com

er_shnmhrjn@gmail.com

me_subash1901@yahoo.com

Abstract—Android is linux based mobile OS which is being used by popular smart phone brands like Samsung, LG, HTC, Sony

Xperia, and many other. Jellybean OS is 4.1 version of this android which was released on july,9 2012. This paper will contain

detailed study of Android 4.1: Jellybean OS. Pros and cons of jellybean. It will cover stepwise development of android OS up to

jellybean. Contrast of Jellybean from old android OS, IOS and Windows Phone OS, details review of technical background of

Jellybean OS.

Keywords— Jellybean, Android 4.1, smart phone

I. INTRODUCTION

Android is a linux based OS. 4.1 version of Android is

popularly known as Jellybean OS. It is claimed to be the best

android OS by google and other intellectual groups who are

working in smart phone companies like google (Nexus),

Samsung(Galaxy series), sony (Xperia), HTC(One, Wildfire

and many more). Hence we will study the good part as well as

bad part of claimed best OS. We will judge it with every

aspect. We won’t claim any OS (android OS or IOS or

windows phone OS) as best or worst.

II. ANDROID

Android is a Linux-based operating system designed

especially for Smartphone and tablets, developed by Google

combining with other Open Handset Alliance (OHA).

Android is now used in various Smartphone and tablets

developed by Samsung, LG, Google, Htc, Sony Ericson,

Motorola, etc and many other mobile companies. Initially

Android was developed by Android Inc which was later

purchased by Google in 2005 and brought up with a project

called Android Open Source Project. Android being an open

source has large communities of developers writing

applications developed primarily in java. Now apps are also

developed in other languages such as C, C++, python, java

script, flash etc. They are available to download from Google

play or other third party sites. In September 2012 there are

more than 675,000 apps and games available on Google Play

to keep users entertained, alongside millions of songs and

books, and thousands of movies. Also the estimated number

of downloads from Google play was 25 billion.

A. History

Android Inc. was founded in Palo Alto in October 2003.

One of the founders of Android Inc, Andy Rubin wanted to

develop smarter mobile devices that are more aware of its

owner's location and preferences. Later Google acquired

Android Inc. on August 17, 2005 and Rubin started working

with Google. At Google, the team led by Rubin developed a

mobile device platform powered by the Linux kernel. And

hence the android was developed. The first commercially

available phone to run Android was the HTC Dream, released

on October 22, 2008. Then Google collaborated with HTC to

release a first Nexus phone, Nexus One. Later on various

brands of mobiles like Samsung, LG, Motorola, Sony Ericson

etc also collaborated with Google and started producing

Android smart phones.

Version Release Date feature

Android

1.0

September

23,2008 GPS and Bluetooth (but not

stereo Bluetooth)

Multitasking

Tight integration with Google

services like Gmail, Google

Maps (with Street View), and

Google Calendar

Apps: Amazon MP3 Store;

YouTube

Android Market (about 35 apps at

launch)

No Microsoft Exchange Server;

no camcorder

Android

1.1 February

9,2009

Universal search box (search had

been limited to the Web)

Revamped Android Market:

Browsing categories (Apps,

Games, Downloads) and filters

(Top Free, Top Paid, Just In)

Camera: Toggle between camera

and video modes; integrated

photo gallery and camera with

bulk photo deleting

SDK expands support for

gestures, voice-to-text

Android

1.5(Cup

cake)

April 30,2009 Virtual onscreen keyboard

Camcorder mode for recording

(and watching) video

Stereo Bluetooth

Home screen widgets and folders

Direct upload to YouTube and Picasa

Android

1.6(Don

ut)

Multiple user accounts

Exchange support; universal e-

mail inbox

Quick Contact pop-up widget to

launch communications with

friends in the address book

Search saved SMS and MMS

messages

Camera improvements include

support for flash and digital zoom

Bluetooth 2.1

Keyboard improvements:

Adaptive dictionary that includes contact names in suggestions

Android

2.0(Eclai

r)

October

26,2009 Live wallpaper; five home

screens

Speech-to-text added to any text

field; microphone icon for voice

dictation in e-mails, texts, and so on

Android

2.2(Froy

o)

May 20,2010 Speedier OS

USB tethering and hot-spot

support

Android Market update: Batch

and automatic updates; installing

apps to the SD card

Adobe Flash 10.1

File uploading in the browser

Improved Microsoft Exchange

support: Security policies, global

address lookup, calendar sync,

remote wipe

Bluetooth support for voice dialing and contact sharing

Android

2.3(Ging

erbread)

December

6,2010 Redesigned copy/paste

WebM video compression

support

NFC (near-field communication)

support

Switch to front-facing camera

from camera app

Virtual keyboard shortcuts

Android

3.0(Hon

eycomb)

February

22,2011 3D graphics support

Side-by-side browser tabs;

private browsing

Dual-pane modes for address

book, e-mail

Redesigned UI includes program

thumbnails

Video chatting with Google Talk

Full-screen-mode photo gallery

Bluetooth tethering

Android

4.01(Ice

Cream

Sandwic

h)

October

19,2011 Support for peripherals like

keyboards and game pads

Resizable widgets

"Pay as you go" support for 3G,

4G tablets

Various bug fixes and enhancements

Android

4.1.1(Jel

ly Bean)

July 9,2012 Support for virtual buttons in

addition to touch-sensitive

buttons

Create folders by dragging apps

on top of each other

A new app tray tab for thumbing

through widgets

Calendar app now supports

pinch-to-zoom

Revamped Gmail user interface

New Chrome browser syncs with

your bookmarks, saves pages

offline, supports 16 browser tabs

More keyboard error correction,

inline spell check

Customizable lock screen,

launcher

Recent applications icon

Roboto typeface

New swipe/delete behavior

Improved voice integration and

copy and paste

Face Unlock security feature

Data Usage tracking

Hide unwanted app icons

Shut down apps that are using background data

I. JELLYBEAN OS

As mentioned in introductory part above Jellybean OS is

android 4.1 version. This version of OS is successor of

Android of android 4.0: ice-cream sandwich. There is not

much different between ICS and jellybean. There is highest

degree of advancement in notification displays, probably the

best among the entire smart phone OS. Google also have

advanced its graphical interface with much clarity using V-

sync and Triple Buffer. Google have also made android to

compete Apple’s Siri which was introduced in apple 4s by

introducing advance google now application. In spite of these

advancement users won’t feel much change from ICS in speed

and browsing capability and camera except jellybean have

filmstrip show while taking photos. Hence google have

introduced just a 0.1 increased version of 4(ICS).

A. Project Butter

Google has been organizing Google I/O conference

annually. Likewise in 27, July 2012, google’s Project Butter

was intended to address one of the major complaints that

Android users had with their devices. The irritant that is

screen lag. Majorly when using the touch interface.[1]

Actually

this project was intended to drive android OS up to 5 version

but to complement the gap of 4 and 5 version google

introduced 4.1. project butter have made android in competing

IOS and Windows Phone OS, since by upgrading touch

Sensitivity, smooth animation, advanced security system and

many more.

B. Notification

Jellybeans have comfortable stacked notification display.

All the notifications are stacked with uppermost expanded.

Each notification can be zoomed by just a pinch. These

notifications are directly connected to web through things like

Google Now. Screenshots and videos also can be easily shared

using android beam, messages and google music. For closing

these notification is also simpler by just swiping them away.

These features probably make best notification display among

all smartphones.

C. Voice Recognition/voice typing

Previously, voice recognition was depended upon web,

which was disabled during absence of internet and process is

slow as well. This time we can use voice recognition while

staying offline. Another good feature is that we can download

voice recognizing driver according to accent. It is not good as

online recognition but very much useful and probably third

party will take greater advantage of it. Another good feature

is that it has been directly connected to mobile search engine

apps like google now, knowledge graph which will help in

finding short meanings and definitions of words. We can use

voice recognition to type.

D. Google Now

Google now is search engine in jellybean which can be

driven by voice very easily. Moreover google assures user

second guess will be success try.

Another facility is that it will give you info of previously

searches. It will give you information like arriving trains buses,

delay of plane, nearest and good restaurant etc. Also it uses

knowledge graph to give general knowledge like if we ask

―who is the present president of Nepal?‖ then handset will

answer ―Dr. Ram Baran Yadav‖.

E. Magic widget

Google have made widgets in jellybean resizeable

volunterily or non-volunterily, which makes easy and

accessibility to widgets magical.

F. Gesture Mode

Google have made gesture mode more advanced that blind

people can use the mobile easily. Also extended Braille

keyboard and keyboard maps can be downloaded. Text

traversal is easy while reading ebooks and as well as browsing

internet.

G. Android Beam

Android beam is simply and NFC-based app in android os

which helps in sharing your snaps, songs, videos easily.

Instantly pair your phone or tablet to Bluetooth® devices like

headsets or speakers that support the Simple Secure Pairing

standard by just tapping them together.[2]

H. Browser

Google have used different advanced tool to make

browsing easy. It has used HTML5, CSS3, Canvas Animation

Kit Environment (CAKE) and

Javascript Engine (V8). A combination of all these tools,

browsing is very fast and has smooth animation. We can now

use vertical text (Glyphs) for typing while browsing. Jellybean

also have special property of updating apps. In jellybean

process of updating app is just to download few component of

that app un like downloading whole app, which makes easy

and fast in updating.

I. Display and Animation

For smooth display and animation google have used

Vertical synchronization (Vsync) and triple buffering. Vsync

is system of responding graphics signal in vertical change (0

to 1 and vice-versa). Triple buffering is advanced way of

responding and handling 3 signals in one time. In triple

buffering the program has two back buffers and can

immediately start drawing in the one that is not involved in

such copying. The third buffer, the front buffer, is read by the

graphics card to display the image on the monitor. Once the

monitor has been drawn, the front buffer is flipped with (or

copied from) the back buffer holding the last complete

screen.[3]

J. WiFi service discovery system

Android 4.1 supports for multicast DNS-based service

discovery, which lets mobile application to find services

offered by peer devices. Helps in peer-to-peer connection due

to which apps discovers and pairs directly to high-bandwidth.

Apps can initiate discovery for a specific service and filter the

list of discovered devices to those that actually support the

target service application.

For example, this means that your app could discover only

devices that are ―printers‖ or that have a specific game

available, instead of discovering all nearby Wi-Fi Direct

devices. On the other hand, your app can advertise the service

it provides to other devices, which can discover it and then

negotiate a connection. This greatly simplifies discovery and

pairing for users and lets apps take advantage of Wi-Fi Direct

more effectively.

K. Keyboard and internationalization

Jellybean supports bidirectional text. Improved support for

Arabic and Hebrew. Vertical text is also support for Japanese

and chinese languages using glyphs. It has custom keyboard

input styles like QWERTY, QWERTZ , AZERTY, Dvorak,

Colemak, and PC styles. , Android 4.1 includes 27

international keymaps.

L. Security

Jellybean OS is claimed to be hard to be hacked. Mainly

features like Address Space Layout Randomization (ASLR)

and Data Execution Protection. ASLR lets a data to take

randomly different memory addresses and dep will defense

against information leakage. Other function like PIE(Position

Independent Executable) support, Read- only Relocation(once

stored data can be just read) and to avoid leaking of kernel

addresses function classes like dmesg_restrict and kptr

_restricted is being used.

M. Others features

1. Accessibility

In Jellybean, now blind users can use 'Gesture Mode' to

reliably navigate the UI using touch and swipe gestures in

combination with speech output. The new accessibility focus

feature, users can move a cursor between controls to maintain

a target for the next action or a source for the next navigation

event. You can double tap anywhere to launch the current

item with accessibility focus. Text traversal in accessibility

gives users more control – choose to move between pages,

paragraphs, lines, words or characters.

2. Face Unlock

Now in Jellybean, The Face unlock have been

updated and is now faster and more accurate. Users can

improve face matching accuracy by calibrating their face in

different accessories (e.g. glasses, hat). Face unlock requires

just a blink of time to verify that the user is unlocking the

device.

3. Google Play

Google Play is set of widgets and stuff it

recommended with various content like apps, game, music,

books and movies. In my Library widget we can see recent

movies, books, music and magazines and dynamically

changes based on what you have been engaging with recently.

If we purchase from Google Play we can synced directly to

play movies, TV show apps , we can add bookmarks to

remember important imformation,and we also can hear songs

from Google play by using a queue of track, by album etc

4. Messaging

New notifications display the full text of

incoming SMS messages. When receiving an MMS, users can

view the full photo in a notification.

IV. CONTRAST OF OS

The contrast between android os, ios and windows phone os

is given in the table below:

V. CONCLUSION

Hence we can see that android 4.1: jellybean OS is the best

android OS ever made. But it is not much different than

android 4.0: Ice-cream sandwich. Google have made it more

advanced to compete with IOS and windows phone OS. They

have shown true capability of android OS.

We can draw out the following conclusions:

pros

Silky-smooth performance

Improved notifications

Chrome as default browser

Resizable widgets

cons

Google Now is limited

Available on few devices

Few tablet-friendly apps

No built-in lost device security

Android IOS Windows phone

Apps It has currently at 650,000 total

It has 225,000 total

Windows Phone currently has

100,000 apps

Maps Offline see street

view iphone users

reared on Street

View

means terrific

NAVTEQ maps

Browser sync Chrome Use of icloud Absent of browser

Mobile

Payment

It has Google

wallet.

It doesn’t have

NFC.

It has digital

wallet.

Video Chat It uses Gmail, Google talk ,

It uses FaceTime.

It uses Skype.

Call Features We can’t enter

into Do Not Disturb mode

We can enter

Do not Disturb mode.

There is no sort of

Do Not Disturb mode.

Messaging It has AIM or

Facebook

message.

It has

iMessage

It has Skype,

Facebook

message.

Media

Streaming

It has Nexus Q. It has AirPlay. It has SmartGlass

But the main challenge of jellybean is that it won’t be used

to with or it won’t be compatible in much hardware and

software also will be hard to develop since even ICS is having

same problem.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

We would like to present our gratitude to college for giving

us this platform to present our skill in this android field. We

would like to thanks Prof. Er. Niranjan Khakurel for his

continuous support and encouraging us in completing this

project paper. And at last thanks to friends and families.

REFERENCES

[1] Open Handset Alliance. Retrieved 2012-02-

15.http://www.android.com/whatsnew/Android - Android 4.1, Jelly

Bean.htm [2] "Triple Buffering: Why We Love It". AnandTech. June 26, 2009.

Retrieved 2009-07-16.R. E. Sorace, V. S. Reinhardt, and S. A.

Vaughn, ―High-speed digital-to-RF converter,‖ U.S. Patent 5 668 842, Sept. 16, 1997.

[3] Elgin, Ben (August 17, 2005). Bloomberg Businessweek. Bloomberg.

Archived from the original on February 24, 2011. Retrieved 2012-02-20.

[4] Cunningham, Andrew (June 27, 2012). Ars Technica. Retrieved

2012-09-15. [5] http://www.techradar.com/reviews/pc-mac/software/operating-

systems/android-4-1-jelly-bean-1087230/review?artc_pg=5