Android 4.1 Jelly Bean is now updated to the new verson 4.2. One of the most in-your-face new features of Android 4.2 Jelly Bean is support for lock screen widgets. The idea is to let users get a glimpse of important notifications without having to first unlock their device. It’s a bit clunky to use. When you first wake the screen, you’ll see an odd line on the left side of the display. This line indicates that there’s a second lock screen page available.
If you swipe over to it, you’ll see the tool for adding widgets to the lock screen. There are only a few available at the moment, including a clock, calendar, Gmail, and sound search. More should become available over time. If you just want to glance at your calendar or see how many unread emails you have, I guess it could be useful, but the number of steps involved to access and use the lock screen widgets makes it faster to simply unlock your device and go straight to the email or calendar app. Google has taken its own technology and developed a method for inputting text that is similar to Swype, SwiftKey, or T9 Trace. Rather than peck at individual letters on the glass display, you trace your finger from letter to letter, spelling each word as you go. Google made a couple of interesting changes to the way the notification shade behaves on the home screen, too. In Android 4.1 and earlier, there was one notification shade that dropped down when users swiped from the top down. Now there are two. Swiping down from the top-left corner of the display pulls down the standard notification shade with your emails, messages, app updates, and other notifications. It behaves just as you expect. Swipe down from the top-right, however, and you’re taken to a new notification shade that provides access to basic device settings. These include display brightness controls, as well as the Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and wireless radio controls. The other big new feature is Photo Sphere. 😀
