14 DAY TRIAL // Google has announced earlier today the immediate availability of the new Android 4.3 Jelly Bean operating system. The new iteration of the mobile platform was made official during a press event in San Franciso, United States.
The search giant has confirmed that Android 4.3 is now being pushed OTA (over the air) to some of the newer Nexus devices, including Nexus 4, Nexus 7, Nexus 10 and Nexus HSPA+ phones.
In addition, the second-generation Nexus 7 tablet will also be powered by Android 4.3 Jelly Bean operating system out of the box.
Google has also confirmed that HTC One and Samsung Galaxy S4 Google Edition will also receive the new Android 4.3 Jelly Bean update “very soon.”
According to Google, Android 4.3 comes with new features for both users and developers. Check out some of the performance enhancements, capabilities and new APIs included in this version of Android below:
“- OpenGL ES 3.0: game developers can now take advantage of OpenGL ES 3.0 and EGL extensions as standard features of Android, with access from either framework or native APIs; - Bluetooth Smart: now your apps can communicate with the many types of low-power Bluetooth Smart devices and sensors available today, to provide new features for fitness, medical, location, proximity, and more; - Restricted profiles: tablet owners can create restricted profiles to limit access to apps, for family, friends, kiosks, and more. Your app can offer various types of restrictions to let tablet owners control its capabilities in each profile; - New media capabilities: a modular DRM framework enables media application developers to more easily integrate DRM into their own streaming protocols such as MPEG DASH. Apps can also access a built-in VP8 encoder from framework or native APIs for high-quality video capture; - Notification access: your apps can now access and interact with the stream of status bar notifications as they are posted. You can display them in any way you want, including routing them to nearby Bluetooth devices, and you can update and dismiss notifications as needed; - Improved profiling tools: new tags in the Systrace tool and on-screen GPU profiling give you new ways to build great performance into your app.”
Soon after announcing the launch and Android 4.3, Google uploaded the corresponding factory images for Nexus 4, Nexus 7, Nexus 10 and Galaxy Nexus (GSM version) on the AOSP website.
For more in-depth information on what's new for developers, check out Google's Android 4.3 platform highlights.
