Design of the software is trade-off between different requirements. You intentionally put focus on one thing and deteriorate another. Project Butter puts focus on speed and smoothness at the expense of both resource and power consumption. It is fine if you have resources to consume and don't slurp too much juice from battery, but it seems it is not the right way to squeeze more performance out of good old Nexus S. There are no spare resources to consume. Device has single-core 1GHz processor, and just half gigabyte of RAM. I didn't notice any significant speed improvements. Some things even got worse: sliding pages in Currents is fast, but at the expense of strange visual artifacts: blurred letters and white smear on the right.
Task Switching
Only one thing is much faster, and it's the critical one: task switching. I use it a lot. In 4.0.3, I had to wait for ages for task list to appear. 4.0.4 was a bit better, but it was still way too slow. In 4.1 it finally pops up quickly.TIP: it is faster to use task switching than returning to launcher and starting application from there. Latter involves running launcher, which is more resource hungry than task switcher.
While Jelly Bean doesn't shine performance-wise, it provides many valuable new functions:
Notifications
Most visible change after new lock screen are new notifications. They look better, they are more informative, and you can expand and collapse them (e.g. mail messages). They are actionable: if you take screenshot, share it directly from notification. If you hold the notification, you can see which application created it and you can even disable notifications for that application. Annoyed by pesky ad notifications created by god-knows-which of the free games that you installed recently? Apply what you just read.Google Now
Being boring person, I'm only mildly concerned about privacy. I think that Google Now is a great way to organize your life. Based on data from your location, searches, calendar and everything else it will give you information about weather, traffic, commuting, travel-relevant information and then some. I wish there is even more cards.Downside is that there are no information relevant for Croatia for more than half of those cards. I keep wondering: Croatia is touristic country. Google has office in Croatia. Why don't we do something about it?! I'm talking to you, guys!
Now if I can only figure out how to return weather card that I accidentally removed.
Privacy
If you are considered about privacy, you will be happy to know that all privacy settings are now grouped under accounts.Avoid nearby Wi-Fi networks with poor connections
This is hidden gem. I am regularly near the weak Wi-Fi connection. When Android senses Wi-Fi, it turns off mobile data and switches to wireless. As connection is too weak to work reliably, I basically lose data connectivity completely. With this new setting I can tell Android to ignore routers with such weak signal and stay on mobile data. Although status bar looks strange with Wi-Fi going on and off, it works, although slower than pure mobile. It seems that mobile does not work at full speed. It is even worse if you have a borderline case of poor signal: it switches to Wi-Fi and then doesn't work. Hopefully Google will fine-tune switching algorithm with next update.Disable background data while tethering
Contrary to some other cases, this is nice example how Google thought about issues upfront. Jelly Bean can disable data intensive background operations while using another device as Wi-Fi hotspot, automatically or with some configuration. Having in mind that Nexus 7 does not have any kind of mobile connection so users must use tethering over their mobile for Internet access, it feels like this feature is introduced especially for Nexus 7. If your hotspot is another Jelly Bean device, and currently it can be only Nexus S or Galaxy Nexus, whole process happens automatically. Sweet, if you are Nexus guy.Sound Search Widget
If I hear the song that I like but I don't know its name, I quickly pull out the mobile and click on Shazam icon on my home screen. It holds application that I either use often or need quickly, and Shazam falls into second category, because I must start it before song ends. Google's Sound Search Widget size is 4 x 1. Google wants me to remove three of my carefully chosen applications to put their over-sized widget. Shazam stays.The Bad
If you like to play with multiple applications of the same kind, most irritating change in Jelly Bean for you will be the new "Complete action using" dialog. Earlier you just had to click on application for one-off or you could select "Use as default" and then click, making it default. Now, in both cases, you select application first and then choose between "Always" and "Just once". It always involve two clicks. What's worst, until you get used to it, you will click on the icon and stare wondering why nothing happened.
Offline voice recognition, which is now standard part of Jelly Bean, is missing on Nexus S. Here Google went Apple's way by providing slightly crippled version of operating system for the old device. This also happened in Ice Cream Sandwich with camera application. Voice search activation by saying "Google" is also missing.
Conclusion
If you have smartphone with specs similar to Nexus S, things will not become buttery. However, fast task switcher and new notifications are reason enough to upgrade. Another ones are being owner of tablet without mobile data or living somewhere where Google Now works to its full extent.As low-end of the Android market is plagued with low-spec devices with Gingerbread, it would be nice if Google invests some effort to optimize Android 4.x for such devices. It is time to get rid of both Gingerbread and Symbian and make life easier for both users and developers.
Photo credit: Željko Trogrlić
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