On Friday, Google began pushing out the promised Jelly Bean update for the Motorola Xoom. While the Nexus 7 is the current watermark for what an Android tablet should be, the Xoom was the first tablet to ship with a version of Android designed for tablets. Many of the features in Ice Cream Sandwich and Jelly Bean originated there.
The Xoom is getting a bit long in the tooth and it has never been a big seller, but it’s still the only extant 10-inch Google Experience Device—the phones and tablets that Google chooses with each new Android revision to show off the stock look and feel of the operating system. Older hardware or not, the Xoom running Jelly Bean still represents Google’s standard for how a 10” Android tablet should be done. It will also tell us something about how Jelly Bean will run on older hardware, in the event that Google’s partners actually get on board and push out the update.
Jelly Bean on the Xoom: No surprises here
Enlarge / The Xoom home screen and application switcher in Jelly Bean.
Jelly Bean on the Galaxy Nexus, Nexus S, and Nexus 7 have all used variations on Android’s phone layout: the Android software buttons across the bottom of the screen, the Google Now bar across the top of the screen, and a consistent dock that stores a few icons and the application drawer. Notifications are accessed by swiping down from the top of the screen, where the network and battery indicators and clock live. When invoked, the application switcher takes over the entire screen.
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Article by Andrew Cunningham (c) Ars Technica - Read full story here.
