Android 3.0 Honeycomb introduced Holo UI, however it was a version made solely for tablets. Months later on version 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich brought Holo to the smaller sized displays of phones. The ICS variation of Holo was more minimalistic, whereas Honeycomb had a touch of futuristic flair.

Now that the appearance of the interface was settled, it was time to make it run smooth– smooth as butter. To assist the hardware along, JB made the CPU go into its greatest performance mode the moment you touched the display, so that it would update the screen as quick as possible.

Jelly Bean also retouched the homescreen. It enabled live wallpapers to be previewed before using them and it presented resizable widgets.

As Google prepares to retire Android Jelly Bean to the fantastic farm in the cloud where it can play with the alphabetically smaller variations, we thought this would be an excellent time to take a look back at a life well lived.

Another major improvement was expandable notifications. This allowed alerts to hold more material than previously, undoubtedly, however it added a brand-new feature too– they could reveal up to 3 buttons, giving the user instant access to essential actions. A missed call notification would give you the option to call or message the person who called you.

Prior to we talk about Jelly Bean, we have to set the phase. Androids early user interface was promising if rather clunky, which led most makers to skin it– at that time skins were significantly better than stock UI. Android 2.3 Gingerbread (which we covered in a previous installation) was the last variation prior to a major split.

Jelly Bean first showed up in 2012 with Android version 4.1, but the name would stay for 2 more minor releases (4.2 and 4.3). 9 years is a long time for an os, specifically in the mobile world. Even a desktop OS like Windows 10 will stay for only 10 years (it was introduced in 2015 and Microsoft will end extended assistance in 2025).

Expandable notices with actions – Resizable widgets that would rearrange immediately

Jelly Bean also considerably improved audio support on Android, which was lagging behind iOS. It included assistance for multichannel audio through HDMI ports, also the AAC codec became supported by default (consisting of AAC 5.1 audio). Gap-less playback made phones far better music players and the Media Router button gave a standardized way to direct the audio to the headphones or to Bluetooth receivers. This version also included assistance for USB Audio, which enabled external DACs to be plugged in.

Another change was to secure the possessions of paid apps using device-specific keys. This made it more difficult to, state, copy a game from one gadget to another.

Smart App Updates permitted the Play Store to deliver delta updates, that is to move just the bits that changed between variations, rather of repeating data the phone already has. Usually (by Googles calculations) this shrunk updates to 1/3rd of a complete download. Later this year Google will make a significant shift in how this works by needing App Bundles to be uploaded to the Play Store instead of APKs. These can diminish even the preliminary download of an app by skipping the parts not needed on a particular gadget.

All this and more featured Android 4.1 Jelly Bean. It was followed by version 4.2 a few months later on. It enhanced on Project Butter with a faster hardware-accelerated 2D renderer, which leveraged the GPU.

Beam was discontinued with Android 10 and there is a fight for its throne. Google sees its Fast Share as the replacement, however it still isnt quite all set. For instance, you cant use it to share a file with a Windows or ChromeOS computer system. Just recently, a group of mobile phone makers have actually united in the alternative Mutual Transfer Alliance, to combine the internal solutions they developed individually.

Android Beam was introduced with 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich, but this initial version just utilized NFC to send links– to websites and even apps (with the link pointing to the Play Store). Jelly Bean included Bluetooth to the formula, enabling you to share photos, videos and other files also.

4.2 likewise presented lockscreen widgets, which were popular for a while, however have actually fallen out of favor given that. Musing, an interactive screensaver mode was likewise introduced and alter dropped (the name was repurposed for Googles now-defunct VR platform).

Lockscreen widgets – Project Daydream (screensaver).

External display screen support with discussion mode.

Brand new Bluetooth stack.

The entire Bluetooth stack was switched out, dropping BlueZ in favor of an open-source task co-developed by Google and Broadcom. This version presented much more enhancements to connectivity and security.

Previous variations might only mirror the screen, the second model of JB permitted apps to deal with each display individually. Wireless displays were likewise supported, using the Miracast standard.

4.2 enhanced the electronic camera with HDR support, an early step into computational photography, which would go on to become the most essential function of modern-day mobile phone video cameras (more crucial than even the sensing unit and lens).

Maybe essential of all was the addition of emoji support. They were quite plain black-and-white emojis (color was included with v4.4), but you can now switch the keyboard to emoji mode and avoid pesky letters and words in your messages. You can see the Jelly Bean emojis here.

Improved RTL assistance for the user interface and text input.

Here is a bit of trivia – Jelly Bean was the last Android variation to reach 50% market share. Regardless of Googles difficult work at simplifying the update procedure for makers, no Android version since JB has actually handled to attain a bulk share.

Jelly Bean first got here in 2012 with Android variation 4.1, but the name would stick around for two more minor releases (4.2 and 4.3). Android 2.3 Gingerbread (which we covered in a previous installation) was the last version before a major split.

Do you still have a functioning Jelly Bean gadget? Drop a line in the comments to tell us what it is and what you utilize it for– and perhaps think about retiring it or at least flashing a more recent variation of Android.

Android 3.0 Honeycomb presented Holo UI, but it was a variation made exclusively for tablets. Smart App Updates enabled the Play Store to deliver delta updates, that is to transfer only the bits that changed in between variations, instead of duplicating information the phone currently has. The last variation of Jelly Bean, Android 4.3 arrived in 2013.

Google stopped publishing Android version circulation numbers a long time ago, but by 2019 all 3 variations of Jelly Bean had fallen to around 3% market share. The company said that they now represent less than 1%, which is why it decided to stop upgrading Play Services for those older variations.

There were other modifications too. V4.3 consisted of a VP8 encoder as Google was trying to move away from patent-encumbered formats. Also, all 3 versions of Jelly Bean added incremental improvements to Right-To-Left (RTL) languages.

Anyway, devices running Jelly Bean can continue working and even downloading apps from the Play Store, though they will not see many (if any) updates for those apps.

Android version circulation in mid-2019.

The last version of Jelly Bean, Android 4.3 got here in 2013. It added support for Bluetooth Low Energy and the Audio/Video Remote Control Profile 1.3. Also, the graphics stack was enhanced with OpenGL ES 3.0 support.