Jelly Bean update gives select Samsung tablets some refined sugar

The Wi-Fi Galaxy Tab 2 10.1 and 7.0 and the Galaxy Note 10.1 all get an update.

Andrew Cunningham – Jan 18, 2013 10:13 am | 21

The Galaxy Note 10.1 is one of the three models getting its Jelly Bean update today. Credit: Andrew Cunningham

It has taken a few months, but Samsung continues to make good on its promises of Jelly Bean updates for its past and current smartphones and tablets. Today, the company announced that United States users with the Wi-Fi versions of the Galaxy Tab 2 10.1, Galaxy Tab 2 7.0, and Galaxy Note 10.1 tablets can expect to see Android 4.1 updates for their tablets imminently.

In its announcement, Samsung focused on the new features that the update gives the Galaxy Note 10.1, most of which involve improvements to the stylus and multitasking features we looked at in our review of the device. Previously, the device’s “dual view” feature would allow you to open two Android apps at once on the left and right halves of the screen; the “cascade view” feature expands on this by letting you open multiple apps and resize and layer them manually, very much like a true windowed operating system. Apps can also be pinned to always stay on top of the stack.

The S Pen’s new capabilities include the ability to write directly on e-mails and calendar events. You can also tell the tablet to wake up when the stylus is removed.

Meanwhile, details about what Jelly Bean brings to the supported Galaxy Tab 2 models are scarce. The press release says only that the tablets will “benefit from the core improvements of Android 4.1,” which we suspect means that users can expect the smoothness of Project Butter and not much else. That’s nothing to sneeze at, though—when we looked at Android 4.1 on the comparably specced Motorola Xoom, we found that while Jelly Bean wasn’t a revelation, it did bring a pleasant consistency to the tablet’s performance that it had previously lacked.

The updates are available both through Samsung’s Kies media syncing software and over-the-air. There’s no word on when the update will be made available to cellular-enabled devices, but expect the carriers to take their usual weeks (or months) to approve the update before it goes out.