Google hosts its annual I/O Developer event in San Francisco showing off Android, A Nexus Tablet, Google Glass and more.
- 400 million Android devices, one million activations a day – Google shows off the staggering numbers behind their ecosystem
- Jelly Bean, Android 4.1 revealed, rolling out in mid-July - Google officially took the wraps off Android 4.1 Jelly Bean, the next evolution of its mobile platform and although not quite as revolutionary that the shift from Gingerbread to Ice Cream Sandwich was, it still marks an important improvement for the ecosystem.
- Project Butter improves Android 4.1′s speed to a silky-smooth 60FPS - As major part of the upgrade seen in Android 4.1 Jelly Bean, Google has unveiled Project Butter, an advancement meant to alleviate Android’s frequent problems with device lag. Project Butter lets the CPU and graphics run in parallel, rather than crash into each other, and has a big impact on both real and perceived speed.
- Google Android 4.1 Jelly Bean home screen revealed, automatically accommodates your apps and widgets - The latest Android OS automatically arranges onscreen icons around any new widgets or apps you choose to insert. And now you can also remove any unwanted apps or widgets by simple swiping them up and off the home screen to delete them.
- Google Now revamps search integration in Android 4.1 Jelly Bean – Hugo Barra shows off the new Google search for Android which shows off a faster more natural feeling search with integrated ‘Google now’ a new concept that pushes the information that you need right now to your device.
- Google makes the Nexus 7 tablet official – My favourite announcement of the entire day was watching Google pull a Microsoft on everybody with the announcement of a tablet. The Nexus 7 features a quad-core Tegra 3, 1.2-megapixel front camera, NFC and 1280 x 800 IPS-based LCD display and the asking price is just $199 for an 8GB model and $249 for a 16GB version.
- Sergey Brin demos Project Glass onstage at Google I/O – Oh dear lord, this is just too brilliant for words, so I’ll stop typing and let you watch
- Google unveils $1,500 Project Glass Explorer Edition, takes pre-orders for 2013 only at Google I/O – Unless you’re at Google I/O and a US based developer then the fact that they can preorder Project Glass means nothing to you. But the fact is that Google is accepting money for a product and giving a date, albeit broad.
Google has once again shown a willingness to innovate faster than its rivals and whether any of these features will actually be useful to us remains to be seen.
A massive thank you goes to Engadget for their coverage of the Google I/O event.