[Editorial] Project Butter : What you really need to know...

 Android 4.1 aka Jellybean is already out and is the latest push by Google to their (ours too..) favorite operating system to greater heights. The latest and greatest version of android is often linked with the term 'Project Butter'. Well what exactly is project Butter? How does it matter you? Without those technical jargons and stuffs, we at android app journal, help you to crack the code.

A bit of  history.. The worst and the oldest criticism android ever faced since it was born was its user friendliness. People thought android is too complex for the common man to use. Secondly the ever present lag in the user interface.
The lag was visible on even the high end hardwares leaving atleast a few people envying the fluidity of  IOS or the WP7. The dawn of the ICS era marked the end of 'android is complex' argument. Android 4.0 aka Ice Cream Sandwich came with a unique and visually stunning UI which was more intuitive and streamlined than any previous versions of android. ICS gave android a new definition to user friendliness with its totally revamped UI. While the user friendliness was answered through the ICS release, the bigger problem still remained..the UI lag, the jitter and jatter you occasionally face while using your android phone everyday. This is exactly what the 'Project Butter' tries to answer through Android Jelly Bean release. ( While Project Butter is an important feature integrated to JB, there are other important features too  which make android the most desirable mobile OS on planet Earth. )

     As stated, the Project Butter is a special initiative by the Android team intended to polish the Android and  give the OS a new level of responsiveness. And the result is nothing short of amazement. Please watch the quick video to see difference Project Butter imparts to JB compared to ICS. The video comes directly from Google, and was carried out on exactly same hardware and test conditions.

      So how exactly is this achieved? Primarily Android 4.1 ensures a consistent 60fps frame rate by extending the vertical syncing timing across all the screen drawing and animation. Secondly, Android anticipates what the user do ( within a 16 millisecond sync heartbeat) ensuring that the frames are always in syncs with the time. Thirdly, a mechanism called triple buffering which introduce a third buffer which will be used on demand to store the drawn and to be rendered frames, so that no frame is skipped. The android even anticipates where the user will touch the screen next, and pre load the animations. This also helps to improve the touch latency by syncing the touch with Vsync timing.

      This all points to one thing..Google is dead serious about improving the usability of its operating system. They are taking the positive aspects of the criticism they have faced over the time they delivered a splendid reply to their critics, in the most novel way...in the most Google way.