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Review: Android 4.2 is a sweeter-tasting Jelly Bean


Google, find me the perfect subhead for this section

With Android 4.1, Google launched "Google Now," a combination search enhancement tool and personal assistant. Often called Google's answer to Apple's Siri, it delivered on much of its promise as a virtual assistant for Android users and continues to delight in Android 4.2, especially with its newly revamped Cards feature.

As in Android 4.1, you can swipe up on the lock screen to engage Google Now's Cards functionality. Each panel is specifically designed to bring you data that you might need for the day, including weather in the area, traffic information from your current location, shipping notifications, and flight updates. Cards are also organized by level of importance, though users can tweak the individual settings of each one to filter what they will utilize the most. If a user gets sick of a card, they can swipe to the right to hide it.

All of this information is aggregated automatically. Cards tap into the same data that Google Now pulls from: user's location, schedule, and recent search queries. This allows Cards to provide what it deems to be the most relevant information. It also keeps track of things like when packages have shipped and when they’re arriving, per information typically found in the user’s e-mail. It’s particularly helpful in instances where it does things like deliver driving times and directions to the handset as a user is perusing a particular store’s website on a desktop computer.

Enlarge / Google Now automatically pushed this data to the handset screen.

In Android 4.2, Google made some improvements to Google Now. It employs Google's Knowledge Graph, which essentially brings up quick stats related to the search query and the most relevant links that could help one further explore the answer. In our testing, though, the service had several instances where it flubbed a bit on returning relevant results. When asked if it could tell more about Cats: The Musical, Google Now returned a list of results with the actual phrase as the search term, rather than basic information on Andrew Lloyd Webber’s classic musical. When Google Now was simply asked, "Cats: The Musical," it then brought up the most relevant search results. It seems more efficient, then, for users to simply "Google" their search term rather than try talk in a conversational format (unless the question is what users are attempting to search for, of course).

Enlarge / Google Now did a better job of searching for what I was seeking by its typical search term...
Enlarge / ...Rather than by asking it a question.

Other times, however, Google Now excelled with dialogue. When asked to translate a word from English into Romanian, Google Now immediately pulled up the translation without hesitation. This kind of built-in functionality has already been proven crucial in this era of instant gratification. It’s good to know that Google is right there with its competitor in this regard.

Enlarge / Google Now can help you with translating Romance languages.

Photo Sphere

Enlarge / Android 4.2's new Camera interface, folks!

In addition to giving it a spiffy new icon, Google made some tweaks to its camera application. First, it's made major changes by enabling users to hold down on the screen to bring up different options, including several photo modes that were not available before. Those modes include HDR and a few "scene" modes where the camera app adjusts the settings to the specific environment. The HDR mode worked well in low-light situations, but scenes like "party" and "night" needed to be used in the settings they were prescribed for. The flash the phone emits really does a number on a subject—whether it's a person or a beloved toy.

Enlarge / Photos taken in HDR mode with Android 4.2 appear well-balanced.
Enlarge / Photos taken in night mode only work in certain situations because of the explosive flash the phone emits.
Enlarge / The flash in party mode turned out to be a little more palatable for the poor modeling elephant.

Additionally, Google tacked on an option in the Camera app called Photo Sphere. This new feature enables both the novice photographer and the frequent traveler to capture all 360 degrees of their chosen moments. Taking some inspiration from Google's own Street View, Photo Sphere follows the same mechanism as the built-in panorama feature previously introduced in Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich. The user picks a central spot, but instead of moving the camera in one singular direction, they can take shots in all different directions—up, down, left, right—until the "sphere" is completed to their liking. The app then processes the photos, matches the colors and lighting, and produces a circular panorama.

The feature is easy to use and a dynamic way to document trips and events. But there were some moments where a number of the photos stitched together were either missing elements, or the end result looked exactly like a stitched-up collage. In the Photo Sphere shot featured below, one of the picture frames only made it partially into the photo before being chopped in half. Fortunately, users can review the Photo Sphere panorama it in its spherical entirety before sharing it, though it will still automatically save to the Gallery.

Enlarge / In Android's new Photo Sphere feature, some parts of the photo were left out when the panorama was stitched together.
Enlarge / However, Photo Sphere takes very nice looking, scenic panoramic photos outside.

Coincidentally enough, Google's Photo Sphere seems to take some cues from Microsoft's Photosynth, a camera feature that was introduced to the Windows Phone and is also available as a standalone app for iOS. Like Microsoft, Google has enabled users to take 360-degree photos and share their creations with friends. But Google has an edge by enabling users to upload it to Google Maps Street View and literally share it with the world, even contribute it to Google’s massive arsenal of Street Views. So far, the site’s additions seem well curated, featuring photos of picturesque landscapes and helpful walk-throughs of university campuses for nervous freshman. To contribute, users just need to share their Photo Sphere panorama to Google Maps, Earth, Search, Google+ Local, or other third-party sites utilizing the API.

Enlarge / Microsoft's Photosynth app (seen here, though the photo was taken with an iPhone 4S) stitches together the photos in a semi-circular manner.
Enlarge / Google's Photo Sphere flattens out the photos into a panorama.

We imagine if Google’s Android keynote had actually gone live, this would have been one of the features at the forefront. Google is essentially enabling its users with their own Street View cameras to help map the world and crowd source more virtual sight-seeing tours. Frankly, this is a win-win for everyone who has ever enjoyed wasting hours with Street View. And it’s really up to the user whether they want to share their photos or not.

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