A model displays the ASUS Transformer AiO, an 18.4-inch device combined tablet and PC, during a news conference at a media preview of the 2012 Computex exhibition in Taipei. (Photo : REUTERS/Stringer Taiwan)
Getting timely Android updates can be frustrating thanks to the open source nature of the operating system. The latest version of the Android operating system, Jelly Bean, is only available on a handful of devices, and electronics manufacturer ASUS is the latest to confirm the Jelly Bean will be coming to their devices.
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An official statement on the ASUS Facebook page reads:
"We are pleased to announce that we will be updating many of our tablet products to Android 4.1, Jelly Bean. The ASUS Transformer Pad, ASUS Transformer Pad Prime and ASUS Transformer Pad Infinity are all scheduled to receive an update to Jelly Bean in the coming months."
The company did caution ASUS customers against getting too excited though. The Android Jelly Bean operating system requires more processing power to handle and not all devices will get the new operating system.
"We are still investigating Jelly Bean updates for other devices, but we are not in a position to confirm whether any other products will be eligible for an update at the moment."
The Google Android Jelly Bean operating system will offer performance enhancements as well as some new features, such as Google Now, Google's response to Apple's Siri voice assistant.
The only other confirmed manufacturer making the Jelly Bean update available to consumers is HTC. The company announced that the HTC One X, One S, and One XL will all receive a Jelly Bean update. HTC did not give a specific timeframe, and only stated that the Android Jelly Bean for the HTC devices is in the works.
The hottest smartphone of the year so far (barring, of course, the not-yet-announced iPhone 5), the Samsung Galaxy S3 should also be getting a Jelly Bean update soon. The website SamMobile reported that the Galaxy S3 will receive a Jelly Bean update sometime in August.
So far, the latest version of the Android Jelly Bean is only available on flagship Google devices like the Galaxy Nexus smartphone and the Nexus 7 tablet. Motorola's Xoom tablet is also scheduled to receive the Jelly Bean update because like the other two devices, it runs a vanilla version of Android.
A vanilla version is one that has not been specifically tapered by a company and this means Google can send out an update by itself. Manufacturers like Samsung and Motorola usually customize their Android operating systems and leads to the companies releasing updates at their own leisure, rather than a system-wide update from Google. This leads to fragmentation, where updates for Android smartphones are more staggered than they should be.
