Android 4.2. What does the new flavour of Jelly Bean taste like?

All the Nexus faithful have received the fruits from their Google labour and have had a taste of the new flavour of jelly bean (except the Nexus S, you have lost support). Including me with my Nexus 7. What's new and what is worth the update? All will be revealed.

The Good: Multi User Support
For most households, you share the one tablet. It could be your remote and TV guide on the coffee table or just the small computer that you all share for surfing the web and playing games. Now 4.2 has multi user log in. This is like your home computer where each person has their account with their own passwords, their own home screen and apps. Now this is on the tablet edition only which is a good move for Android as not many people share their phones. This works very well as most phones have dual or quad core processors to handle the heftyness of many homes on one tablet. Each person has their own gmail and gcal synced without access to the other persons Google accounts. It is a good feature to have standard rather than with a root and rom.

The Bad: Swipe/Swype Keyboard
If you have a Samsung Phone, you have Swype keyboard built into the touchwiz skin. If not you may have used the swiftkey app from the store. If you haven't used these apps, I will explain what a swipe keyboard is. It is a new version of predictive texting. You swipe your finger over the letters you want in order and the phone will work out what word you mean. It is a rather cool feature but is rather gimmicky unless you constantly use it and the swipe interface becomes second nature. I have found the swipe keyboard apps on Android to be rather in your face and hard to use. Their predictive systems are very good which does make up for the clunky look. On 4.2, this is built into the OS and looks like the original keyboard so it does not look clunky or intrusive. It is so non intrusive that you don't even know that it is there. The other main difference to this keyboard than the apps is that the prediction hovers above your finger. Do I personally like this? No, not at all. It hides the keyboard above your finger and is rather distracting. I haven't used the swipe keyboard since I first tried it on the update but I will probably not use it.

Other Features and Bugs
Daydream is a feature which I have not been able to get to work. It supposed to give you a photo frame/table style thing when you plug it into a dock or charger. I can preview it but I never have got it to work in the wild. I will update you when I do get it to work. The photos get thrown onto the table and you can move them and swipe them away. It is a cool feature if it worked. I will get a dock and see if that works too.
Airplay for Android has been updated so that you can stream your whole screen to you TV with an adapter (HTC Media Link) rather than just your videos and pictures. Needs to be tested and needs to be a cheap adapter for it to be useful.
Actionable Notifications is a small feature which is okay. The expandable notification on jelly bean 4.1 was a great feature for quick email view. Now if you are going to be late for a meeting, you can send a message to the event organiser from the notification and snooze alarms too.
Quick options (Tablet Edition) is helpful. If you have a Samsung phone/tablet or a skin that has options in the notification bar, this will not be for you. On pure android, we now have a quick option bar if you swipe from top to bottom on the right side. You get wifi, bluetooth, user change, battery life, aeroplane mode, auto rotate, brightness and full settings button. It is rather good but if you just want the normal notification bar, you may get quick options by accident.
Bugs that will be fixed is that some Google apps (especially Google Now) sometimes makes the tablet freeze and reboot. This happens once every few days but always happens when you are leading the curve.

The Ugly: Lock Screen Widgets
This is such a silly idea. When you are in the lock screen, you can swipe left to add widgets to the lock screen so you can use information when you are not in the phone/tablet. Why do you want this? I only use the clock (standard) and I have tried the calendar but I don't really want someone who has got my tablet without me knowing looking at my calendar or my email. Who does? This is why it is The Ugly. If you want to use this feature, please do but you are reducing the security of your data very much.

So, to answer my question of What does the new flavour of Jelly Bean taste of? It tastes good. It has a slightly better fluidity than the old jelly bean with some cool features what you may have had before if you rooted your phone but has a few features and bugs that could be got rid of. Jelly Bean 4.2 tastes like a strawberry trifle. Vanilla taste with the smoothness of dream topping but has small fruit niche obstructions in the jelly that just hurts part of the experience.

More on Jelly Bean 4.2 and what you can do, click here

Nexus Range Official (With iPad Killers?)

Unlike most blogs, I will not discuss rumours or leaks. But we have official releases on the new and updated Nexus range. There was no announcement from Google because of the hurricane but they have released the new range for us all.

ASUS NEXUS 7

The nexus 7 range has been updated. I bought a nexus 7 16gb at £200 but now that model is at £160. I do feel a little burned with the price drop but it happens so I'm not too annoyed. So we have a price drop. But now we have a 32gb WiFi and 32gb 3G models. That is a good update to the range as the nexus 7 needed a data option. The pricing is very competitive with the market. 32gb Wifi is £200 and 32gb 3G is £240. The iPad mini versions are £350 and £450 respectively. That is a £150-£210 premium for apple! I have apple fan friends and they even think that the iPad mini prices are extortionate. How will apple compete in the 7 inch market?

But the iPad does have 4g advantage but outside the US, this doesn't matter.

I'm not here to slag off apple but their pricing strategy will make them DOA.

LG NEXUS 4

The most leaked phone in history. The title was owned by iPhone 5 before someone left the nexus 4 in a pub. So you probably know everything about the phone but I will cover it quickly. It has all of the features of Jelly Bean so no Key Lime Pie yet. It has a 4.7 inch display, 2GB of RAM and a 1.5GHz quad core processor. So all the bells and whistles of the newest hardware with a small price of £280 for 16GB 3G. This price is very competitive in this market as the new Galaxy Note 2 is £550. The price range the nexus 4 is in is with the HTC Desire X, Samsung Omnia M. Most mid range phones. So its a top end phone for a mid range price. I want one now.

I know people think NFC is gimmicky in the UK because we do not have Google Wallet but this phone does have wireless charging. I think this will be the norm very soon.

Well done Google for two reasons. For a top end phone at mid range price. And for letting all of the Android phone makers get the chance for the Nexus crown. Just need a Galaxy Nexus Note, Xperia Nexus and Droid Nexus.

SAMSUNG NEXUS 10

The iPad killer from Samsung and Google? It could be. This tablet has a 10' Super High Def screen! I mean super because it is 2560 x 1600! 300 PPI for £320! A bargain I personally think. Has a dual core processor with a front and rear facing camera and MMO WiFi. As all Nexus is packed full of great specs for a small price. This come up trumps. An updated Jelly Bean (which I'll be reviewing when it arrives on my Nexus 7) which has some cool features including swipe keyboard and a better panorama mode. But on this tablet, there is no 3G. Why don't they put some data on this? I will probably wait for the data option to come as I did regret it with my Nexus 7. The price comparison is 16GB for £320 and 32GB for £390. Compared with the new iPad Retina (Lower PPI than Nexus 10). £400 and £480 respectively gives apple a £80-90 premium which is enough to think about the iPad as an option.Unlike the Nexus 7 which is a no nonsense buy.

ROUNDUP

So what Nexus devices should you buy? I would say buy all of them as they are a steal with the prices. Especially with the Nexus 7. This Nexus range completely blows the iPad mini and the iPhone 5 out of the water. But is the Nexus 10 an iPad killer? I think it could be because of the slight price difference and the better display.

What do you think? Comment below on what you think on the new Nexus range.

Nexus 7 vs Kindle Fire (ecosystem)

I was excited when I first heard the Kindle Fire will be released in the UK. It was a shame that they did not release the first version in the UK but that was understandable as the Amazon on-line content ecosystem was close to non existent then. This review is not on hardware, this is for the ecosystems they supply as now that is the reason you buy the product. They are content consuming devices rather than content creation devices like a laptop or computer.

APPS
Firstly the Google apps. It has become larger and larger from my first experience of android app store back on my first LG android 2.2 phone. In 2009, there was 16,000 apps in the original android store. Now in 2012 there are 600,000 apps in there new and improved Google Play Store. The play store has a lovely interface on the web and on the nexus 7 and most of the apps are free and great.
The Amazon app store was release in the UK about a month ago and I have using it on the nexus 7 since it open. The interface is not tablet optimized, feels more like a mobile version of the site. There are over 50,00 apps in this store which is incomparable to the play store. But Amazon has an advantage over Google, free app a day. This may not sound like a swing to you but to me, free is always good. I really like the idea that one app a day is free (every day is chosen). The first free app I downloaded from this free app a day was Who wants to be a millionaire? It was a very good app indeed and I think that if the Amazon app store has more apps, it could surpass the Play Store.
WINNER Google, Just about.

BOOKS
The Google play book store is very weak. I do not like the range of books available and it just feels like a rough, quickly bundled store. There are few words on this one as it only needs few words.
Amazon on the other hand with the kindle store has the strongest book store I have ever seen. There are a few books of my interest not on there like Harry Houdini on Deception. But I bought that hard copy through Waterstones and I even had to wait 5 days to get it so i'm not fussed of its unavailability in the kindle store. I have the new kindle and have had it for a while so my usage of the kindle store is in excess. The free books are great and the priced books are priced very competitively. And if the UK get Kindle Serials and the availability of ebooks for it in Waterstones stores; Google could never Catch Up.
WINNER Amazon, by miles

VIDEO CONTENT
Google play movies is very good for casual film watchers. £3.49 for a new film and £4.49 for the HD version. The quality of the stream is perfect for my BT infinity connection through the Google play movies app and YouTube. Never buffered at all even on a normal broadband connection. The range of movies is very good for a new store in the UK and the offers they supply like 99p movies in the bank holiday weekend. So overall its very nice indeed but no TV shows yet for the UK.
Amazon doesn't have a movie store as such but they do own LoveFilm which is a very good service indeed. From £6 a month you can stream unlimited movies and TV shows with an internet connection. So no downloading and watching offline. But they have a very large amount of movies and TV shows and works very well. I used to have a LoveFilm account which was very good indeed, I also had the discs come through as well. If you are a movie buff and like watching alot of movies, get a fire with a LoveFilm account.
WINNER Depends on how much you watch and where you watch it

ROUND UP
This Ecosystem business is now the main reason you buy technology now. Amazon and Google only earm money on the content, not on the hardware. So depending on what you want, this is what you get.
IF YOU have an android phone and love their apps and have alot of money in the store, NEXUS 7 (as you can transfer apps)
IF YOU just like playing alot of games and social networking, NEXUS 7 (you get Amazon app store on google)
IF YOU like reading alot of books and enjoy reading, KINDLE TOUCH or PAPERWHITE (the e ink screen is so much better than a backlit screen)
IF YOU want, or have a LoveFilm account and you want to watch your films on the small screen, KINDLE FIRE
IF YOU like films but don't watch alot of them or like watching them offline, NEXUS 7