Jelly Bean arrives for Galaxy S GT-I9000, still needs a lot of work though

The good folks over at XDA Developers have managed to port Jelly Bean to the Samsung Galaxy S GT-I9000, which still remains a hot favourite in the developer community. The custom ROM was created by Team Android Jelly Bean (TAJB), which consists of developers and enthusiasts like MKalter, Capez and ali1276. This is still a very early build and many of the functions are still not working, but the point is, it’s happening and very soon we should be getting a stable Jelly Bean ROM. If you have a Galaxy S lying around and want to try it, then you can find all the download links right here. We wouldn’t recommend using this on your primary phone, since a lot of features like Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, Calls, etc. are still not functional. Features that do work just fine are the touchscreen, GPU, softkeys/hardkeys, Butter, ADB, USB, Internal and external SD card and the camera. The instructions are pretty straightforward – dump the ROM in the root of the internal memory, boot into CWM, wipe everything and flash the ROM.

Jelly Bean comes to the Galaxy S!

Jelly Bean will be coming to Nexus S, sometime in mid-July and since the Galaxy S and the Nexus S are very similar, it was only a matter of time before someone ported it over. For those who aren’t aware, Jelly Bean is Google’s latest version of Android that was demoed on their Nexus 7 tablet. The update will first be seeded to Google’s Nexus devices like the Nexus S and the Galaxy Nexus. Google states that Jelly Bean builds on top of Ice Cream Sandwich. This new OS makes everything smoother, faster and more fluid. Notifications are now more dynamic, allowing you to access and interact with the alert from the drop down menu itself, without ever having to open the app. Another interesting feature is that voice typing is now faster, working even when one does not have a data connection. Google also states that they have redesigned search from the ground up in Jelly Bean, with a new user interface and faster, more natural Voice Search. They go on to state that one can type their query or simply ask Google a question. Google can speak back, delivering a precise answer, powered by the Knowledge Graph, if it knows one, in addition to a list of search results.

More from News & Analysis

What is the US HIRE Bill and why is India’s $250-billion IT sector worried? Is the internet dead? What's this theory that OpenAI's Sam Altman says might be true?

Here is a quick look at some of the highlighted features of Android 4.1 Jelly Bean:

• Project Butter: Just as the name suggests, this feature aims to make the operating system on devices extremely smooth. As per a report by TechCrunch, they explain this feature by saying, “The Android team did so by bumping up Jelly Bean’s framerate to 60 FPS, and implemented vsync and triple buffering to tighten up the experience. Developers also have access to a new tool called systrace in the Jelly Bean SDK that displays what the rendering engine is up to.” At the Google I/O conference, Google showed off the difference in speed between Ice Cream Sandwich and Jelly Bean and the former pales in comparison.

• Text Input: As mentioned earlier, with Jelly Bean, the keyboard is a lot faster and more accurate. The report by TechCrunch goes on to state, “Text input has also been improved, especially with regard to voice typing – users no longer need to have a solid network connection to make the feature work, as the speech interpretor lives directly on the device. The predictive keyboard is also able to guess at which word you intend to type out next. Only U.S. English will be supported for now. Arabic and Hebrew support has been improved as well, and they’re looking to add 18 new input languages.”

• Camera: Google have not left out the camera as well with the update and commenting on this a report by GSMArena states, “Jelly Bean brings new UI and gestures, so you can swipe sideways to access the gallery (yes, just like on the WP smartphones). You can then quickly delete images by swiping them off the screen.”

• Notifications: With Android 4.1 Jelly Bean, the notifications bar has also received an upgrade and elaborating on this point a report by CNET states, “Jelly Bean though will push things further, supporting notifications that will allow complex actions and more ways to interact with alerts. For example, you’ll be able to tap a missed call message and have the option to ring the caller back. Developers will also have the flexibility to craft custom notifications for their apps.”

• Android Beam: With Android Beam, one can now share videos via NFC, along with the ability to pair a Bluetooth device with NFC capabilities by merely tapping it.