If you check out the blurb on the official Android website, you’ll find the claim that Android 4.1 Jelly Bean is both the fastest as well as the smoothest version of Android to date. Okay, so that’s a pretty big claim; however, at the same time that also raises the customers’ expectation. Making such claims can work for you or it can also backfire on you.

The question that people ask is whether Jelly Bean is truly faster than Ice Cream Sandwich? Another question that pops up quite a lot on the web is whether Jelly Bean is faster than Apple’s iOS 6. Of course you can’t help but compare these things especially if you’re someone who has noticed both the good and the bad of these operating systems.

Speed vs. Lag – What’s the Case?

If there is one thing that has been a tad disappointing about these tablets and Smartphones (doesn’t matter which one of them you’re dealing with), you’ll get lag issues every so often. Every Android phone you get your hands on will display certain laggings at one point or another. Some people think it’s more of a hardware issue while others say that it’s a software issue.

Well, whatever it is, here’s the moment to prove it. So you take the best of whatever hardware there is, maybe dual core or even a quad-core just make sure you don’t get any excuses that you have a hardware issue at hand. Let’s say we take a system that has a total RAM of 1GB just to make sure that your smartphone can handle just about any task you put it through.

Now, with that sort of configuration you should expect your smartphone to work more fluidly without much lags right? Wrong. Even if you have all that hardware, you will still notice that these pieces of equipment will still be a tad slower than devices that can inherently multitask. They just aren’t fast enough; meaning that they will feel sluggish doing one operation or another.

Do Jelly Beans Make the Ice Cream Jump?

So, after experiencing these small disappointments with Ice Cream Sandwich along with the rest of the other Android versions, you hear the good news and jump on the Jelly Bean bandwagon. So, is it really worth it? The answer is a mix of yes and no. Now, let’s dig deeper and further into this discussion.

The claim of Android 4.1 Jelly Bean is that it smoothens out the entire operating system; well at least with regard to its native parts. That sounds pretty cool – really much like what you usually see in Windows or any PC’s GUI. That is very promising indeed.

So, you open a folder and thanks to the most recently increased frame rates you will notice that each one of them that you use snaps open like a charm. Now that in itself is an impressive improvement. The next thing anyone would want to try is the task switcher. Well, in Jelly Bean that also works quite well.

You’ll notice that the app tray is a lot easier to navigate and use. You won’t feel like you’re tugging at it. All these elements of the operating system’s user interface will look and feel like they have been significantly improved.

Another problem point that many Android users have experienced is when you scroll in the smart phone’s web browser. That used to be a bit troublesome; but with the latest Jelly Bean update that is smoothened out as well. So, everything looks pretty good so far, so what are the downsides?

The Downsides

Of course, nothing’s perfect even in the world of Android versions, right? The downsides are found in the way Jelly Bean handles your third-party applications. The native parts of the user interface have been improved so now they just need to do something about third-party apps.

If you use third party apps like Spotify or even Facebook you’ll notice that there are lag times when you launch these apps. There are also other hiccups that need to be fixed but all in all this is a pretty impressive upgrade.

This Android update has made several things faster like the folders, camera, photos, and launcher. However, there are still a few more improvements that can be made after Android 4.1 Jelly Bean.

David Fuller reviews electronic gadgets for www.shoppingpreview.com. You can read more about the latest laptop reviews, tablets, home entertainment systems, and other gadgets in this website.