Samsung Galaxy s2 jelly bean 4.1.2 update

Samsung galaxy s2 jelly bean 4.1.2

This is a review on the galaxy s2 i9100 running the Android Open Source Project (AOSP) coded by Cyanogenmod running Cyanogenmod 10 Nightly

There are certain things i want to mention about Cyanogenmod. They are really doing a great job developing the AOSP without shifting the phase where we liked things the google way. They are really working hard and i would really like to mention that still the galaxy nexus hasn't received the 4.1.2 update yet. But the cyanogenmod team merged the codes within two days of the source codes were made available at the AOSP. along with the stack features cyanogenmod has made many cool features, notably the pop-up messaging and the power widgets to toggle wifi or bluetooth, but unlike the samsung's roms we have the freedom to choose what we want to have in the power widget and how many with boundaries. There are many more but you will realize it only when you use it.

Coming back the jelly bean 4.1.2

well i got to say that am really impressed how smooth and beautiful the OS feels though not as much as the windows phones because THE PROJECT BUTTER couldn't be implemented as SAMSUNG has still not released the SOC(system on chip)for the EXYNOS chipsets DOCUMENTATION for the developers and its quiet notable that all the other chipset makers  like qualcomm, Texas Instruments and Sony have always made sure the developers get the codes asap, thus no butter, no JELLY BEANaudio( still runs on the cracked ICS documentation) support and no proper hwcomposer support and still they have managed to run the OS so smooth till now. do ask samsung at twitter @SamaungExynos to release the source codes. more the requests sooner there would be a solution and thus the benchmark results have also gone a few hundreds down on the quadrant 

as you see the score is low compared to the samsung's rom and so it reflects while playing some high end games like asphalt 7 heat, The Dark Knight Rise and so on. They run a little choppy. not such a huge difference though still you feel it.

INTERFACING

looks the same as the ICS but with a lots of changes on the screen 

you must be aware that in the nexus phones and the nexus 7 the google search bar stays to all the page you scroll over and in the cyanogenmod you have an option to remove the search bar. As this being the AOSP there are everything that you get what the nexus runs like the google now and so on. but before getting there the UI of the jelly bean is actually refreshed in terms of transition which are so gorgeous and beautiful and with PRJECT BUTTER i bet its going to make it even more fluidic and beautiful. the UI is quick and very responsive. The app drawer is the same as the ics but you will feel the difference on the widget section.

you can see the beautiful smooth edges and layout compared to the ICS. Looks a lot better. its not just about the looks but feels completely different on the performance and the way it works from ICS.

NOTIFICATION BAR & NOTIFICATION DRAWER INTERFACING

The notification drawer on the Jelly Bean is  completely refreshed from the ics. there are so many new features unlike the ics had (swipe to clear notification)

as you are seeing the notification drawer you can see the power widgets below the clock and its my frequently used once i choose to have there. once you swipe from the top of your screen and pull the notification draw it follows your finger so smoothly and there you see a big and beautiful clock on the left corner and the date and day mentioned next to the clock. there is short cut to get to settings and the clear all button to the right corner and have to say all of this alignment looks a lot beautiful and mature than on the ICS. the next noticeable thing will the the notification with a small icon on the left corner mentioning what it notifies and it makes a lot of sense. all these makes you to understand what kind of notifications you have received at a glans which is a lot helpful when you are driving or when you are using your phone during class hours. its really nice how the notification drawer works and the bottom grey border glows blue when you touch it and it adds more beauty to it.

Excluding this there is this option to expand and collapse the notifications like for example you see the screenshot where it shows the screen shot icon is the expanded form and the collapsed ones looks like the other notifications. this feature works on all google apps and developers who are willing to add this feature to their apps. trust me this works with a single hold and pull down and pull up to expand and collapse the notifications and with one swipe from the top to bottom you can open all expandable and collapsable notifications which is really cool which covers the initial level of interfacing.

even the settings have been a tweaked a little and cyanogenmod coded has the follow deeper interfacing features 

as we see under INTERFACE we got

LAUNCHER

LOCK SCREEN

THEMES 

SYSTEM

let me go in the order

LAUNCHER

The launcher is something we are familiar with this doesn't mean cyanogenmod is using something like nova launcher. Everthing is stack and this launcher is suited to execute more features. once you enter the launcher this is what you see.

and here we can see a variety of options for further customization like home screen, drawer & general.

HOME SCREEN

this setting deals with the complete customization of the home screen and its completely flexible.

now its needless to say as you are looking at it. the grid size option gives use the option to have 4x4 up to 7x7 in one screen and thats really amazing. its like completely utilizing the screen space depending upon the user's needs. it really gives you an option to choose your layout. the number of rows and columns from 1-7 and they can be selected the way you want, even 1x7 or 7x4.

the homescreens lets you have up to 7 of them which we get on a samsung's rom just by pinching the homescreen to add and remove, in this case you choose it here.

the default screen option is really one good way to keep a default screen which can be one among the 7 you like. such feature is available on the samsung galaxy s3's nature ux and not in the touch wiz 4 yet. this feature is  really convenient.

the vertical and horizontal padding is about leaving the border spaces and i don't think anyone would like to change that as everyone wants the full screen in use don't you?. you may feel " why do i need all this" its just the freedom you get! using and not is up to one's interest.

i have already mentioned on removing the search bar on the homescreen and here is where you remove it if you don't want it.

 this is something really amazing on the RESIZE ANY WIDGET. this lets you resize the widgets which are no resizable too so it acts like the windows phone 8 homescreen, as bigger the icon is dragged it gives more information and when you make it small it becomes as small as a normal icon and i love the window phone 8 like feel. knowing or unknowing cyanogenmod had this feature from ics so can't actually say its a windows phone 8 kinda feature. so this option is really interesting to people who like having a lots of widgets to their apps

the hide icon label is the black label that appears below every icon on the homescreen to highlight the app's name you can see in the above screenshots.

DRAWER

in AOSP when swipe along the pages it goes to the widget drawer when the app pages are over. this stops that from happening. all these may seem to be small features but all these come under the comfort zone and absence of these might be annoying. 

GENERAL

this doesn't have so much to do but one of the most interesting feature. auto rotate screen. that doesn't mean inside the apps but even on the home screen. this feature was available from ICS but this was made available by google officially from this 4.1.2 and that too for tablets and am not sure whether this feature will be hitting the phones. some symbian users love this feature as all the symbian devices had this and its here.

with all this the complete interfacing and interfacing customization of the homescreen is completed

LOCK SCREEN

the android lock screen from the ICS had only two options. swipe to the left for the camera and to the right to unlock the device. this went through a small change in the jelly bean where you get the google now to make the smart assistant to assist you. but cyanogen mod when a step ahead and gave us the freedom to add few of our favorite app to the homescreen with no boundaries, which includes messaging, music games and any kind of application that is installed in the phone

as i listen to music a lot i have added my play music to the lock screen and it simplifies my task by going to they player by just swiping to the play music icon. 

this lock screen options are the once with AOSP thus has screen security which has options like pin,pattern, slide, face unlock, password.

the none makes  the power key to lock & unlock your phone without any unlocking patters or gestures, even that's a welcoming utility.

but still cyanogenmod has something more to surprise us. i use the slide unlock and when i get into that setting i see more things to customize. after i press the lock button you can set a delay too if i feel the need. you have an option to even unlock your phone by using the menu key or the middle button on your phone.

there is quick unlock option for those where one uses a password or a pin where you need not  enter the ok or the enter button to make the device recognize your key, if you key in the right password\pin your phone unlocks and that's a cool feature too.

you even have this option to have the clock in the right middle and left. the battery status is a new feature that show the battery status on the lock screen and there is an option where you can view it all the time on the lock screen or only during charging, some other stack features are viewing the weather and calendar on your lock screen notifying your events and alarms and so on. other than this you have this option to display the owner's information on the lock screen.

THEMES

one of the most loved features is the themes and this was completely dead with symbian. when i had a nokia phone i use have so many themes that made the look and feel of the phone better and more interesting to use, i really appreciate cyanogenmod for bringing it back and give it to android. more than launchers i personally feel that the themes give better look and feel for the device as they are light and just a cover that acts over the OS but the launchers run as a separate application and drains the battery. everyone likes themes and i hope there would be plentiful themes available for the cyanogemnod just like how symbian devices had during those days.

SYSTEM

the system part of the interfacing take you to more deeper into customizing what we see and what we want to see when we wake up our device.

STATUS BAR

this is where we see the battery icon, the signal the clock and the other notifications icons. here we get to set the cock to show the am/pm, you get to see your battery in a circle within which the % will be mentioned or you can even hide the battery status and the same applies for the signal strength status. people who look for more notifications on the status bar will be really glad with this feature though you won't know your basic details if you are going to hide them.

NOTIFICATION DRAWER

as mentioned earlier they let you enable the power widgets on the notification drawer and apart from that you not only get to chose what power widgets you want on the drawer bout also the order in which you want it in.

POWER MENU

the power menu show the options to add like reboot menu, screenshot and profile switch

HARDWARE KEYS

you can use hardware buttons to perform talks depending on the number of times they are activated and we get to choose the pattern and the activity that will take place when activated.

this the new accounts layout which would be very much know to the iphone users and thus that same system of accounts layout has been deployed with the ability to have multiple accounts from one application which is really cool.

PERFORMANCE

am not talking about the phone's performance here. there is this setting called performance in the settings menu which help you save power or work with performance

this doesn't mean you can over clock your cpu. there  are modes like on demand, userspace, power saving and few more where the clock speed is adjusted depending upon what we want. power saving gives up the gup usage and thus the phone runs a lot choppy and the phone processes in around 200-500 mhz. these clock speeds doesn't exceed the 1.2 ghz that we got out of the box.

well i would say a cyanogenmod is always better than the samsung rom. and this very quick updates form cyanogenmod is really one thing to celebrate about for the flashaholics. as i said everything is really good about the cyanogenmod running galaxy s2 but the lack of the soc documentation for the exynos chips really bugs me as we don't get to fell the full power of the exynos and the mali 400 monster gpu in the s2. because of this there is no project butter too on the s2 as mentioned. but samsung has told that they are working on to settle down this issue. but when the jelly bean rom from samsung gets released for the galaxy s2 i am sure the butter and lot more problems will get solved but nothing can make the device better until samsung releases the documents. hope it happens soon and due to the lack of this the battery performance is a little poor but the phone is really fun to use. my say will be once your warranty gets void its worth rooting and flashing your phone with cyanogenmod.