Now that I have 4.1.2 what do I do?

[Little Darwin]

Well, after a couple of days on 4.1.2, I am finding that I don't really do anything different with the Optimus G than I did with ICS... I have looked at Google Now, and I guess it could provide some functionality to me at some point, but I don't know that, for me, it is more than Google search with location enabled and a different place to display certain information that I receive in emails... Do I really need Google Now to tell me I receive a package, since I still get my Google mail notification of the same event (which is where Google Now derived the info)? It does let me know if there is a traffic delay on its preferred route for getting me home, but I rarely go that way, and frankly, a difference between a 14 minute commute and a 16 minute commute is not that critical to me. Oh,, and it shows my weather, like the weather widget on my home page... Perhaps as it learns more about me, or perhaps I learn how to exploit the capabilities, I will find it more useful.

But, I started wondering what else JB could do for me... surely there must be a dynamite app or two out there that exploits some of the internals of JB, but when I searched the Play Store for Jelly Bean, all I found were apps to give me the JB keyboard, and other such apps to make earlier versions of Android look like JB.

So what do I do now, start lobbying for 4.2.x so that I can have the next iteration of the OS?

Do I get a JB related active wallpaper?

After belly-aching for a week or two about not getting JB fast enough from Sprint, I am finding that I need something else to fill my time.

Any suggestions?

I know... maybe I'll just leave lame messages in the forum... That's it! I have a new purpose!

Thanks for letting me ramble (as if you could stop me).

I am generally happy with JB... But, please let me know what you are doing to maximize the Jelly Bean experience!

 

[FryGuy66]

^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^
Yeah, what him said.

 

[prowlingfox]

They're working on CyanogenMod 10.1 over on XDA. Just a few kinks that still need to be ironed out.
(if you want something to play with)

 

[jleliekelly]

What?!? You mean no one was waiting for JB for great wallpapers?
Sorry, feeling very snarky today.
Sent from my LG-LS970 using Tapatalk 2

 

[sRedwolf]

Are you finding that Google Now affects your battery pretty significantly? I'm finding that "Maps" is now one of the largest single sources of battery drain (whereas with google now "off" it barely registers on the list).

Given the limited usefulness of Google Now overall I'm starting to think it's not really worth the battery hit I'm taking. What's it really doing? Tells me the movie times at a theater (once I'm already there), displays the weather at my location (which I already know from HD widgets), indicates the streetcar times (which I rarely ride) and tells me the travel time to work (using the route I don't actually take).

It's kinda neat to show your friends but I'm not finding it useful in real life situations.

Edit: Don't get me wrong - I'm enjoying JB on this phone... I'm just not finding Google Now very exciting

 

[klokateer123]

Are you finding that Google Now affects your battery pretty significantly? I'm finding that "Maps" is now one of the largest single sources of battery drain (whereas with google now "off" it barely registers on the list).

Given the limited usefulness of Google Now overall I'm starting to think it's not really worth the battery hit I'm taking. What's it really doing? Tells me the movie times at a theater (once I'm already there), displays the weather at my location (which I already know from HD widgets), indicates the streetcar times (which I rarely ride) and tells me the travel time to work (using the route I don't actually take).

It's kinda neat to show your friends but I'm not finding it useful in real life situations.

Edit: Don't get me wrong - I'm enjoying JB on this phone... I'm just not finding Google Now very exciting

Same here. I thought Google now was gonna have more perks, but holy cow it kills my battery. Also, I'm also noticing that my phone starts to heat up a lot when doing simple tasks like surfing the web. Didn't use to do that on ics.

Sent from my LG-LS970 using Android Central Forums

 

[bobdob]

I think most of the benefits in 4.1.2 are under the hood. Google Now is not an enticing proposition for me although some people love it.

One nice advantage of 4.1.2 is the notification shade update. You can now long-press on a notification to get a popup menu. "App info" is always there and it takes you to the usual app force stop/clear cache screen, but the new thing there is a checkbox where you can disable notifications - a great feature for sure in the case of some apps. An app can also choose to put its own entries in that popup menu, though I don't know any that do at this point. I believe apps can also put more content and controls in the notifications themselves, which would be used for things like music players.

Under the hood is "project butter" which does some display optimization that is probably more helpful to slower phones than ours. And a kernel fix that makes "Android System" (or was that "Android OS"?) not show up as a top battery user, and reduces some major kernel wakelocks so you can get a bit more deep sleep provided your apps are behaving (maps does not, and to tame it requires rooting and some judicious tool usage). I'm getting double the standby time on a charge out of JB compared to ICS, though it drains just as fast when I'm actually using the phone).

The main JB feature I'm wishing for is the lockscreen stuff. LG's lockscreen has some great features that I don't want to give up by replacing it with a 3rd party one, but I'd like to be able to have a little more customization there. But that's only in 4.2.