I suppose you’re wondering why I even bother to mention a small upgrade to Android. Well, it’s just like when Microsoft introduces a service pack to an operating system. Windows 95 became much better with service pack 1 and file names could be longer and with spaces and wasn’t so dependent on 16-bit structure. The same happened with W98 and W2000 and XP. Well, you get the idea….

Jelly Bean (Android 4.1) was a big improvement over Ice Cream Sandwich (4.0).

I’ve been using 4.22 for a long time and the notifications and integration with  Maps are really neat. I get told in the morning and afternoon how the road conditions and traffic are for the expected commute (the one Google knows I make every day). You could get Douglas to talk about this easily, too. Note 2 users and Galaxy S4 users are operating with a similar version level.

Reports are that there is about a 10% speed improvement with 4.3 on the Nexus 4 (which is already plenty fast). And there is an option to leave the wireless system scanning at all times so the phone always knows where it is, using WI-FI location, even if you want to set the phone to only use your data plan to send/receive data. This takes advantage of the software in some apps that gather your location. This constant-scanning is turned off by default, but you can set it on if you want to use that feature for some game or social app. Another feature of 4.3 is an upgrade to Blu-tooth to 4.0. The Nexus 4 will be (is) the first to get this upgrade, which uses less power (better battery life) and has connectivity improvements, I think.

So, what’s going on? My guess is that the phone manufacturers are complaining that they need 6 months to get out each upgrade and that Android is too far ahead of them. Many have only offered one upgrade to their customers since 4.0 and they don’t want to work on 5.0 (Key Lime Pie) until the next big phone upgrade.

I talked about this before, they have been on a two-year upgrade cycle and would LOVE to have the next big thing match their marketing schedule. But Android has a team working on the present system and the next and someone to tell them to speed up or slow down to match various “political” developments.

LTE on the NEXUS 4 works fine and now T-Mobile has LTE. The NEXUS 4 originally worked (with only minor fiddling) with LTE in the original version 4.11 around Christmas last year. With version 4.22 a different radio (think of it as a radio driver) no longer worked with LTE. So the hackers installed either radio 33 or 27 and did a little fiddling and it works fine on the T-Mobile LTE network, which is now even in Portland. Some people claim a download speed locally of 30 Mbits (faster than most WI-FI !).

I’ll know next Wednesday (July 25th) what is really in the 4.3 over-the-air upgrade. In this case the “OTA” upgrade will come by WI-FI. Although I still hope (against hope) for LTE coverage with the upgrade, there is nothing (nota, zip) that suggests it will be there. But I have a “hunch” that it will be easy to make a minor change (hack) to implement it. That’s my HOPE, anyway…. In either case, I’ll wait and see how fast it becomes available before I give up the latest operating system (4.3) for this faster form of data coverage (LTE).