When it arrived on the Verizon 4G LTE wireless network on December 15 of last year, the Samsung Galaxy Nexus 4G was the first handset to offer Android’s Ice Cream Sandwich (ICS) operating system version 4.0 to a US smartphone. That OS update was one of the most significant in some time for Android, and ended the fragmenting that was occurring across multiple operating systems and devices. Just this past week in San Francisco, California at the Google I/O conference, the Android 4.1 Jelly Bean operating system update was announced. And only a few days later the Android 4.1 Jelly Bean OS upgrade was spotted online waiting on Google’s servers before its official launch next month.
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The Samsung Galaxy Nexus is the first handset that will receive the Jelly Bean 4.1 update, and developers that attended the Google I/O keynote address were given free Galaxy Nexus handsets with the operating system already installed. The official Jelly Bean 4.1 upgrade discovered online is evidently the same as the one that was red carpeted at the I/O conference last week. Jelly Bean is going to deliver a new notification system, and also a specially named Project Butter. That project will address lag in the Android interface, and early word is that the new OS interaction is as smooth as the project’s name.
Google has also included a new voice search system to do battle with the virtual voice assistant Siri found on the Apple iPhone 4S. Google Maps will also receive some off-line navigation and a speech recognition feature will allow for off-line voice dictation in English. While the Jelly Bean update can be found online, Google has not given it its official blessing yet, and warns against downloading this “unofficial official” OS. Jelly Bean 4.1 will begin rolling out to devices next month, with the Samsung Galaxy Nexus 4G being the first smartphone to benefit.
The Samsung Galaxy Nexus was exclusive to the Verizon Wireless 4G LTE system until its recent appearance on the Sprint wireless network last month. The large 4.65 inch Super AMOLED display delivers a resolution of 720 x 1,280 pixels, and uses more than 16 million different colors to render visuals. The Verizon Galaxy Nexus delivers up to 12 hours of talk time from a single battery charge, and the handset employs a dual core 1.2 GHz central processor and separate GPU chip that handles all graphics processing. 1.0 GB of RAM memory is on board, and the Samsung Galaxy Nexus delivers the most built-in, user accessible data storage out-of-the-box at 32 GB. Video capture is provided at 1,080P HD resolution. Buy the Samsung Galaxy Nexus 4G starting at one penny.
