All on Jelly Bean

Officially off stock firmware on all three Android devices at home.

The Toshiba Thrive is running a CyanogenMod 10 build (JellyBean) called Dastardly Dingo. The UI is a Go Launcher HD app.

Just as the warranty on the SII ran out, I rooted and upgraded the firmware to the latest JellyBean build. An AOKP JellyBean build.

The UI is a Nova Launcher, providing additional functionality to the stock launcher.

The final device, a Nexus one, is running Android 2.3.7 (Gingerbread), limited only by it's hardware specs from upgrading to ICS or JellyBean.

The biggest difference, of course, is the really powerful Google Now application, that syncs itself across both the JellyBean devices. More details post on Now at some point later, but safe to say, one of the first, well polished, functional and useful personal assistants on today's phones.

Whew - all aboard on JellyBean.

ICS Power Management

Moving to ICS on the Samsung SII has been underwhelming for the most part - partly driven by the fact that the UI has been kept relatively stale by Samsung, and made worse by the fact that ICS while powerful, has more than a few hiccups during operation.

But there is one aspect that ICS is really good with - memory management. ICS comes with a Honeycomb inspired task switcher that also doubles as a task killer. Flicking an application in the task switcher kills it, releasing the memory and plausibly making battery usage better.

Well at least that was the theory, till I tried to put it in practice and presto - it worked! Check out the screenshot showing a run time of a day and eight hours with more than 40% of the juice still to go. Yes, the usage was not as heavy as I normally do with the phone, but still a 32 hour run time was not something I had frankly expected.

Finally - ICS for Galaxy S2

AT&T had been hinting at the Ice Cream Sandwich upgrade to the Samsung galaxy SII for a while now. Last week it even went so far as releasing the update and then rolling it back after some customers were able to get it.

Looks like whatever kinks Samsung had in producing a custom version for the US market seems to have been taken care of and my phone is now running ICS. Here is a screenshot.

The upgrade process itself was smooth - took all of about five minutes once the backups and such were completed. The only nit-pick, was that you had to install Samsung Kies to actual do the update instead of doing it over the air (OTA). But considering this was a major version upgrade, I did appreciate the backup opportunity Kies presented.

First impressions - not that many actually. Because the version of ICS is a Samsung customized, AT&T pre-loaded version, it is not that different from the Gingerbread copy. But, just beneath the surface there are differences. The biggest being the smoothness with which the interface seems to be working. And of course the subtle UI elements, like in the settings menu. It seems like someone actually spent time thinking about the end user while putting these together.

More details later, but for now, screenshots of the upgrade itself.