(Cross-posted on the Official Android Blog)
At the end year at Google I/O, we talked about momentum, mobile and more. This year, we’re picking up fair where we left off. More than 400 million Android devices have immediately been activated—up from 100 million at the end June. And twelve fresh Android devices are activated every every second—that’s more than 1 million a day. Today, we’re rolling outside a fresh version of Android called Jelly Bean, adding more entertainment to Google Play, and introducing two powerful—yet distinctly different Nexus devices to bring you the best of Google.
Jelly Bean: simple, gorgeous and beyond smart
Jelly Bean builds on top of Ice Cream Sandwich. It makes everything smoother, quicker and more fluid. For example, notifications are immediately more dynamic: if you’re late for a meeting or missed a call, you can email or call directly from notifications. The keyboard is smarter and more accurate, and can predict your following term. And voice typing is quicker, working much when you don’t have a data connection.
We’ve redesigned search from the ground up in Jelly Bean, with a fresh user interface and quicker, more natural Voice Search. You can type your query or simply inquiry Google a inquiry. Google can speak back to you, delivering a precise answer, powered by the Knowledge Graph, if it knows one, in addition to a list of search results.
Today’s smart devices still rely on you to do attractive much everything—that is, until immediately. Google Immediately is a fresh feature that gets you just the fair data at just the fair age. It tells you today’s weather before you commence your day, how much traffic to expect before you leave for employment, or your favorite team’s score as they’re playing. There’s no digging required: cards appear at the moment you demand them most.
Starting in mid-July, we’ll commence rolling outside over-the-air updates to Galaxy Nexus, Motorola Xoom and Nexus S, and we’ll also release Jelly Bean to open source.
Google Play: more entertainment
Google Play is your digital entertainment destination, with more than 600,000 apps and games plus music, movies and books. It’s entirely cloud-based, which method all of your content is always available across all of your devices. Today our store is expanding to comprehend magazines. We’ve been working with leading publishers Condé Nast, Hearst, Meredith and more to offer magazines like House Gorgeous, Men’s Health, Shape and WIRED.
Immediately, you can also acquire movies in addition to renting them. And we’re adding television shows on Google Play—in circumstance, we’re adding thousands of episodes of broadcast and cable TV shows, like “Revenge,” “Parks & Recreation” and “Breaking Terrible,” from some of the top studios, like ABC Studios, NBCUniversal and Sony Pictures. You can play back movies and TV shows on all your Android devices, through Google Play on the web, and on YouTube, and soon we’ll bring the familiarity to Google TV devices.
Movie buys, TV shows and magazines are available today on play.google.com, and will roll outside to Google Play on devices over the coming days.
Nexus 7: powerful, portable and designed for Google Play
All of this fantastic Google Play content comes to lifetime on Nexus 7, a powerful fresh tablet with a vibrant, 7” 1280×800 HD exhibit. The Tegra-3 chipset, with a quad-core CPU and 12-core GPU, makes everything, including games, extremely quick. And best of all, it’s only 340 grams, lighter than most tablets outside there. Nexus 7 was built to bring you the best of Google in the palm of your palm. Hang outside with up to 10 friends on Google+ using the front-facing camera, browse the web blazingly quick with Chrome and, of direction, crank through your emails with Gmail.
Nexus 7 comes preloaded with some fantastic entertainment, including the movie “Transformers: Dark of the Moon,” the textbook “The Bourne Dominion,” magazines like Condé Nast Traveler and Well loved Science, and songs from bands like Coldplay and the Rolling Stones. We’ve also included a $25 credit to acquire your favorite movies, books and more from Google Play, for a limited age. Nexus 7 is available for preorder today from Google Play in the U.S., U.K., Canada and Australia, and starts at $199 in the U.S. It will commence shipping mid-July.
Nexus Q: It’s a sphere!
It’s fantastic to be able to capture your entertainment with you wherever you go, however sometimes you desire to ditch the headphones and delight in music with friends and family. So we’re introducing Nexus Q, which combines the ability of Android and Google Play to easily stream music and video in your house—all controlled by an Android telephone or tablet. Designed and engineered by Google, Nexus Q is a small sphere that plugs into the best speakers and TV in your house. It’s the first-ever social streaming device—like a cloud-connected jukebox where everyone brings their own music to the party. Available first in the U.S., you can preorder Nexus Q today from Google Play for $299, and it will ship mid-July.
If you own one of the 400 million Android devices outside there, you already know that it’s much more than simply a telephone or tablet. It’s your connection to the best of Google—all of your stuff and entertainment, everywhere you go. Immediately you have a fresh version of Android, more entertainment and a growing portfolio of Nexus devices to choose from—all available in Google Play. The playground is open.
Posted by Andy Rubin, Senior Vice President of Mobile and Digital Content
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