Google’s new Android operating system - Android 4.1, also known as Jelly Bean – to be released in mid-July has some interesting features. The new operating system will be available for the Galaxy Nexus 7 tablet and Nexus S phones and Motorola Xoom tablets. Jelly Bean is Google’s attempt to continue the momentum behind Android. The OS had been activated in 100 million devices at this time last year; now the figure is up to 400 million, Google said. A million new Android devices are activated each day, it said, or 12 per second. The homescreen and camera app get a makeover, the keyboard is smarter and the operating system as a whole is much faster. But the most fascinating additions to Jelly Bean are in the Search - what Google does best. Article continues below Hugo Barra, Google’s director of product management, said the voice-recognition feature in Jelly Bean will not need an internet connection to work. It works in the offline mode. From the demo on stage by Barra it worked very fast without the annoying lag of waiting for the server to process your words. There are 18 new input languages including Farsi and Hindi, although offline voice dictation is US English only for now. Also mentioned on stage are new audio cues for blind users. Voice Search updates are much faster and the search results contain more information, like Google Image search results or Wikipedia pages for example. This is an edge Google’s dictation feature has over Apple’s Siri, which does require connectivity, since the actual processing happens in the cloud. Voice Search looked really speedier than the Samsung Galaxy S 3’s S Voice and Siri. When Barra asked “Who is the prime minister of Japan”, it immediately responded with an answer. I tried the same on my Galaxy S3, but it could not recognise my command. Search interface uses the Google Knowledge Graph to present your search results in information-filled “cards” at the top of your search results. For example, if you’re looking for Rihanna’s songs, you will see an image of the singer as well as some biographical information from Wikipedia alongside it. Google Now is perhaps the most intriguing new Search feature. It seems to know everything about you. It knows what sports teams you like, what your commute is, what buses you ride and where the best restaurants around you are. Google Now uses your search history, calendar information and navigation history to help you be more efficient. “Google Now gets you just the right information at just the right time, and all of it happens at the right time,” Barra said. The new feature can help you calculate how long it will take to drive somewhere and suggest alternate routes based on the current traffic conditions. It can also tell what restaurants are along your route. In some ways, it is reminiscent of Bing Local Search in Windows Phone and the new navigation features of Nokia Maps which will ship in Windows Phone 8. “Google Now figures out when you commute from home to work and back, tells you how long your commute takes usually, and give you a faster route if there’s lot of traffic. On public transit, if you’re on the platform at a subway, Google tells you when the next bus or train will arrive,” he said. He said that Google Now will get “smarter the more you use it” and they plan to add even more functionality to it. Right now, it can assist you with traffic, public transit, appointments, flights, sports and travel. Android Beam has been bolstered with the ability to share video via near-field communications (NFC), as well as the ability to pair with an NFC-enabled Bluetooth device just by tapping it. According to Google, the display rate is increased to 60 frames per second, so opening applications and refreshing the screen appear smoother. And the touch interface has been made faster and more responsive.