Here’s some good news for all Samsung Galaxy S Advance owners. According to a post on Samsung’s Facebook page, this phone is next in line to get an upgrade to Android’s Jelly Bean version. Although this was expected to happen sometime in November, the official announcement from Samsung puts January 2013 as the expected date.
Android 4.1 builds on top of Android 4.0 or Ice Cream Sandwich. It’s a far smoother and more dynamic OS, letting users work on alerts directly from the notification menu itself. Android 4.1 also features better voice typing capabilities that work even without internet connectivity. Also included is Google’s new voice search feature that looks for answers using the Knowledge Graph.
Other benefits of Android Jelly Bean include:
- ‘Gesture Mode’ that can help blind users navigate the user interface conveniently using touch and swipe motions, along with speech output.
- TalkBack screen reader that supports gestures for navigation and traversing through text.
- Better browser with improved CPU and memory efficiency. Sites load faster and sifting through pages is a lot smoother.
- Better HTML5 video support on the browser lets users view videos much better on their Android 4.1 devices.
- Calendar has also got improved animation features, including fade-in of content.
- Users can view pictures clicked by swiping from the camera viewfinder, instead of having to go into the Gallery to view images.
- The camera app has also received new animations, including sweeping photos clicked off the screen, paging animation when browsing images, etc.
- Texting in 18 additional languages like Hindi, Persian, Thai, Kannada, Malayalam, Telugu, etc.
- Notifications are grouped on the basis of apps. Users can pinch to expand or collapse notifications.
