Consumers say: Ice Cream Sandwich is barely here, and now there's Jelly Bean?

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Last week, we asked our readers what they thought of Google latest version of a unified mobile and tablet operating system, the incremental update to Ice Cream Sandwich, Android 4.1 Jelly Bean. We have the results, with a total of 635 respondents taking the time to share their opinion.

With Jelly Bean, Google has added many new features to Android, apart from performance improvements, and developer capabilities. New features range from Google Now (supposedly a precognitive version of Siri), offline voice typing, and interactive notifications. It also improved upon widget control and the onscreen keyboard.

Android 4.1 Jelly Bean also made Android “smoother, faster and more fluid”, with Project Butter, that is claimed to make the system more responsive overall, including touch sensitivity and animation frames. For more details about the changes to Android with the v4.1 ‘Jelly Bean’ update, refer to our review, and launch coverage.

So, is Android 4.1 Jelly Bean finally up to scratch? 27 percent of our readers seemed to think so, with 173 votes in favour of “It [Android 4.1 Jelly Bean] finally makes Android as good as iOS.” Others were more undecided, with some unsure how this would help the app ecosystem (4 percent, or 27 votes), a few felt that the features were nice, but the update was too incremental (9 percent, or 54 votes).

The majority of respondents (60 percent, or 381 votes) however, voted in favour of the option “Ice Cream Sandwich is barely here, and now there's Jelly Bean?” It certainly seems as if Android’s legacy of an fragmented OS ecosystem is continuing till date, with most customers (especially those who’ve already owned an Android device in the past) sceptical about how soon Jelly Bean will arrive on their devices.

After all, it took manufacturers nearly a year to roll out Ice Cream Sandwich, and unfortunately, many models missed that upgrade as well. So far, manufacturers have stayed quiet about just when, and if at all, we can expect Android 4.1 Jelly Bean on their current gen devices. Let us hope, that as it is just an incremental update, like Gingerbread was for Froyo, they won’t take too long, and that devices with ICS automatically qualify for an upgrade.

Check out the chart depicting the results below, and do remember to share your opinion on this week’s ThinkDigit Poll. We’ve asked you “Are you looking forward to updating to Windows 8?” Do also check out previous ThinkDigit Polls, here.

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