Google finally unveiled Android 4.3 at today's
breakfast event with Android and Chrome head Sundar Pichai. Still dubbed Jelly
Bean, this update follows in the footsteps of versions 4.1 and 4.2: it
introduces a couple of major features and a handful of smaller ones without
drastically altering the Android experience introduced back in version 4.0.
Heading the charge is official support for
Bluetooth Low Energy, part of the now-supported Bluetooth 4.0 specification.
Android OEMs have long been able to add Bluetooth 4.0 support to their own
Android builds for their phones, but this is the first time that support has
been incorporated into the core of Android. This means Nexus devices that
receive the Android 4.3 update and have capable hardware will finally be able
to support Bluetooth 4.0, and that OEMs using Android will have to do less work
to offer the feature in their own devices.
The new operating system will also feature multi-user restricted profiles.
This will let users control access to contents and apps per user -- so parents,
for example, can control which applications their kids can access. When
accessed from restricted profiles, applications behave differently. On stage,
Hugo Barra demonstrated this by showing a puzzle game whose in-app purchase
functionality was automatically disabled when it was accessed on the kids'
restricted profile.
ROM leaks for devices like the Nexus 4 and Google Play edition Samsung Galaxy S4 have given us additional insight into minor improvements like those made to the phone dialler, which can now auto-complete numbers from your contacts list. There's reportedly a full emoji keyboard, a must for when your thoughts and feelings are more easily expressed by tiny pictures than words. Other early reports have also mentioned improved performance and boosted active and standby battery life, though we'll have to test this ourselves to be sure.
Android 4.2's camera interface has been swapped out for a new version, identical to what we've seen in Google Play edition phones like the Galaxy S4 and HTC One. Where Android 4.2 arranged its camera settings in a circle, Android 4.3 arranges them in an arc that you navigate by dragging your finger through it. Assuming it doesn't make any changes to the version from the Google Play phones, this new interface is more of a step sideways than an upgrade from the old one. It doesn't introduce new features or even make the old ones much easier to find; it simply changes how those items are presented.
Google's Nexus devices will be the first to
receive the update, with the new Google Play edition phones reportedly
following close behind, as Samsung and HTC make the necessary tweaks to their
respective kernels. The Nexus 4, Tegra 3-based Nexus 7, the Nexus 10, and the
Galaxy Nexus will be updated first beginning today. Older devices, like the
Motorola Xoom and Nexus S, were both dropped in the Android 4.2 update, so
people with older devices won't see these improvements without help from
Android's hacker community.
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