At Google’s recent I/O conference the latest update for the Android operating system, 4.1 Jelly Bean, was unveiled. This was met with widespread approval, bringing plenty of new features such as Project Butter for performance, improved Notifications, Enhanced Voice Search and Google Now. As usual with an OS update though, what everybody most wants to know is if and when their device will receive it so today we’re looking at 4.1 Jelly Bean update likelihoods.
We’ve been bringing you plenty of posts about Jelly Bean so if you want to check out more about the next Android OS then check out some of our previous articles here. Some of you will already have heard the news when it was officially announced that the first device launched running on it would be the Google Nexus 7 tablet to be released this month. The first existing devices to get a flavor of Jelly Bean were announced as the Samsung Galaxy Nexus and Nexus S smartphones and the Motorola Xoom tablet and those updates are all expected from mid-July. However, what about all the other devices that readers may have in their hands right now, hoping for Jelly Bean?
There have been many Android smartphone owners who have felt let down by the speed that Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich is being pushed out, with only a small minority of devices receiving the update so far despite the fact that it arrived at the end of last year. Not only do the different manufacturers have to prepare the update but also then carriers deem when to push the update out and this is the reason why there can be a myriad of difficulties and delays with updates and why some devices never receive them. We know from many reader’s comments about ICS how frustrating many of you have found the wait for ICS and before many people have received ICS here comes Jelly Bean!
Over on Android Central they’ve helpfully taken a look at various manufacturers devices and the chances of those devices receiving Jelly Bean so let’s kick off with a look at HTC and what the people with experience think. Very likely candidates to receive the update are the HTC One X, One XL and EVO LTE that all use HTC Sense 4.0. This is why Jelly Bean updates for the HTC Vivid and Rezound are less likely though as it’s thought that HTC might not feel it’s worth the investment to port Jelly Bean into older versions of Sense, even though the hardware would be adequate. More questionable is the HTC One V, a less powerful phone although Jelly Bean might come because this is another handset using HTC Sense 4.0. Devices seen as unlikely to receive Jelly Bean are the Sensations phones or the Amaze.
Onto Samsung devices next and the Galaxy S3 (S III) is a definite candidate for Jelly Bean along with the Galaxy Note. However Android Central doesn’t feel that the update will get to the Note before the Galaxy Note 2 comes out later this year as all the effort will be placed on getting that ready first. The Galaxy S2 is also likely to receive Jelly Bean although again it may take some time to come considering that Samsung is likely to work on Jelly Bean with current versions of its TouchWiz interface first. Apart from that though the news isn’t promising for any other Samsung devices and they are unlikely to ever taste Jelly Bean.
Next we look at Motorola and it’s felt that the Droid RAZR and RAZR MAXX are both very likely to get the update along with any phones after those. Although the Motorola Photon and Bionic are up to the job it seems unlikely that Motorola will push Jelly Bean to those two handsets, as they are no longer in the spotlight. Also it looks as though there’s very little chance of seeing Jelly Bean for QWERTY Droid handsets so if you have a Droid 4 it’s not looking good.
Moving on to LG and this one is short and sweet with basically the only handsets likely to receive Jelly Bean being the Optimus 4X HD and the Optimus LTE 2 and possibly the Optimus Vu. Sadly if you have a Sony device the possibility of Jelly Bean looks very slim. It’s pointed out that for a while Sony was doing a pretty good job with OS updates but that that all seemed to come to a stop. As one of the latest Sony phones, the Xperia ion, released on 2.3 Gingerbread it doesn’t appear that Sony has much interest in the latest developments and any Sony device that does get Jelly Bean will be a rarity.
For all of the other OEM’s such as Pantech and Huawei it’s much harder to predict whether they will push out Jelly Bean updates so at this stage it’s anyone’s guess. As for tablet devices then check out the Android Central link earlier if you want more information on Jelly Bean for those. We must remind you that the above information is in no way official but does come from people who have vast experience with Android updates and at least gives a general idea of what might come about.
Are you hoping to see the Android 4.1 Jelly Bean update arrive for your phone? Do you hope that the next OS upgrade is pushed out to your device sooner than previous updates have been? Let us know with your comments.