Google has unveiled the latest version of the massively popular Android operating system at its I/O developer conference in San Francisco. It is called Jelly Bean. The new operating system is superior to its predecessor Ice Cream Sandwich in terms of speed as well as features.

Here’s a little sneak peek:

The most prominent update that users get in the new Android OS is super smooth graphics. Google initiated Project Butter to rebuild the graphic system for Android resulting in flowing animations and scrolling, faster navigation screens and apps and more efficient swiping for smartphones.

Other cool features of Jelly Bean include Google Knowledge Graph, which makes your search more efficient by returning appropriate and related results in the form of ‘cards’. These cards may include image, text, video and other data related to your search query. You can also swipe the card away to view simple old-school links to the search. Google has also introduced a smart search assistant named Google Now which automatically detects your proximity and maps out routes for your selected destination. It can tell which routes are the shortest, estimates time required to reach there and a lot more.

You can find out more about this exciting new feature in the following promotional video from Google:

Moving widgets on home screens has also been made easier in Android OS 4.1 Jelly Bean. Icons on the screen make space for the moved widget, which resizes automatically to fit in. Another new addition is predictive text input to the keyboard on screen. Users will see recommended words as they type on the keyboard. The new operating system also offers extended support for notifications and NFC enabled devices.

For now, the devices that have been confirmed to get Android Jelly Bean upgrade include Google Nexus S which is Google’s own handset, Galaxy Nexus manufactured in partnership with Samsung and Motorola Xoom tablet by Motorola, which Google acquired recently.

Source: Liliputing