Google is expected to introduce Android 4.1 Jelly Bean at the Google I/O developer conference later this week — and the company has already added a Jelly Bean statue to its dessert-themed sculpture garden.
While we don’t know what new features the update will bring, there’s evidence that the first smartphone to get the update will be the Samsung Galaxy Nexus, and the first tablet will be the upcoming Asus Nexus 7.
Meanwhile, the folks behind one of the most popular custom versions of Android are getting ready to release their latest stable software based on Android 4.0.
CyanogenMod 9 Release Candidate 1 is now available for 37 Android devices. Builds for additional phones and tablets should be available soon.
CyanogenMod is based on the Android Open Source Project, and provides users with an alternative version of Android to the software that ships with their mobile devices. It includes a number of performance enhancements and additional features including optional lockscreen widgets and themes.
The developers have been testing pre-release versions of CyanogenMod 9 for months, but the team’s goal is to make sure the software is stable enough for everyday use on dozens of devices, so the transition from CyanogenMod 7 (based on Android 2.3) to CM9 (based on Android 4.0) has taken a while.
It’s likely that the move to Android 4.1 will be faster since Google’s numbering system suggests the update won’t be quite as dramatic this time around.
I just installed the RC1 on my Galaxy S2 today, and it’s working fine. No issues. Now I’m just waiting for the speed improvements that were mentioned a couple of weeks ago to be rolled into the CM9 nightly updates.
I looked around but couldn’t find it..did Cyanongen release RC1 for the Nook Color yet?
I believe RC1 will be automatically rolled into the nightly builds, so the answer is probably “yes”.
There’s an effort underway to move the Nook Color version of CM9 to the latest kernel level (3.0) so that it can better support 3D hardware acceleration, so there is still plenty of work to do (the Nook Color uses one of the older, less widely supported ARM processors).
Still, if you don’t need Netflix, the current version runs quite nicely and is much more stable than a few weeks ago.
Did they release a stable version of Cynanogen Mod 9 RC1 for the Nook Color yet?