At its June 27 Google I/O conference, the search giant and owner of the Android smartphone operating system unveiled its latest version of Android: Jelly Bean, version 4.1. Jelly Bean isn't a major leap forward as Ice Cream Sandwich was compared to Gingerbread, but brings a refined UI and a new real-time updating technology called "Google Now."

Google Now Versus Siri

Siri debuted in iOS 5 on the iPhone 4S and allows users to say a request - search the weather, or for local restaurants, for example - and Siri will provide the results on a card. Google Now is a little different: it provides ongoing information on topics such as scores of a baseball match or the weather. Users hold down the home button and swipe up. Information is presented on cards, which is based around search history and location. For example, it may show the nearest Target store.

Notification Bar

Perhaps not the most headline-grabbing feature, but Apple's implementation of Android's Notification Bar was decidedly familiar: users swipe down from the top and see a widget of the weather and/or stock information along with notifications categorised by apps. Information can be cleared, or tapping on a notification opens the relevant app.

Functionality has, literally, been expanded in 4.1 Jelly Bean. Users still swipe down, but information can be expanded by pinching to display the subject line or more (iOS 5 shows just the subject line). The Google Now cards also show as notifications, which update in real-time. If notifications in iOS were enabled for Eurosport, for example, it would be pushed through as a pop-up notification when something changed or a match started/ended. This seems more elegant.

Talking of elegance, the notification bar doesn't fill the whole screen like on iOS. Instead, it fills the middle and is semi-transparent.

Voice-to-Text

There's now a microphone icon throughout the operating system which users can tap, and after speaking search results are shown. These are more specific than the summaries of information Siri shows: for example, a search for "Who is the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom?" shows the Wikipedia entry of David Cameron along with his picture. Siri displays a card of information.

It remains to be seen how the software works in practice, because even though Siri has been praised it has been criticized for not consistently picking up requests. The Verge said the technology wasn't totally consistent at the I/O, though that could be because of the volume of people at the conference.

Widget Customization 2.0

The ability to move and resize widgets has been expanded in Jelly Bean: users can tap a widget, drop it onto the screen inside a box and resize into one of multiple sizes. Widgets automatically relocate, so bigger widgets such as e-mail fit without overlapping. Widgets in previous versions of Android felt loose to drag and drop. This seems to bring some uniformity to placing widgets.

It's now known when other OEMs will able to send out the update. Google didn't launch a new smartphone running Jelly Bean, though, but there's still the question of how many Ice Cream Sandwich devices are going to be outdated and for how long.