It turns out that the rumors we heard about the Motorola DROID 4 last week turned out to be true. DROID 4 owners, you shall be seeing an Android 4.1 Jelly Bean update heading your way sometime soon. There wasn’t an exact time frame set, however Verizon Wireless already has the update support page prepared in anticipation for the roll out. So lets go into detail about what you can expect.
First off, Voice Search should bring you more accurate search results and answers. This should make hands-free operations much more easier. The notifications panel will see an update that brings in a variety of new functions for services like emails, music, media sharing, and more. You will get the Jelly Bean keyboard that brings more accurate predictions as well as Swype like messaging. And finally, the biggest update you’ll see is Google Now, which brings you up-to-date information on a variety of things such as weather, news stories, events, package shipments, and more.
Jelly Bean also brings a smoother experience to Android devices thanks to Project Butter. The Android user experience is improved significantly with Jelly Bean, with a much, more lag-free experience as well as improved aesthetics. Motorola DROID 4 owners (and other Android owners) have been anticipating the Jelly Bean update for their devices for quite a while. It has been about 7 months since DROID 4 owners were updated to Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich.
Alongside the news of the DROID 4 receiving Jelly Bean, there is also a new speculation that Motorola will be releasing 3 more Android devices in the future. These smartphones aren’t the X-Phone, but they’re still impressive. The Motorola Ghost will have a 1.7GHz quad-core Snapdragon S4 processor, a 720p display, and Android 4.2.2 Jelly Bean at launch. It will also be released on all 4 major carriers. Not much is said about the Motorola Yeti or the Motorola Sasquatch, but those devices should be heading to AT&T and will be running Android 4.2+.
[Update]: Verizon Wireless has announced that the Android 4.1 Jelly Bean update will begin rolling out to Motorola DROID 4 users beginning tomorrow (March 19th). The upgrade will be pushed out in phases, so keep checking periodically to see if the update has reached your phones.
[via Verizon Wireless]
The JellyBean update will likely break PDANet WiFi tethering for the Droid4 – it did for my wife’s Droid Razr update last week. USB should still work.
got my update last night.