A lot of the staff here at Android Headlines own a Nexus device of some sort, some of us have a Galaxy Nexus in amongst our many phones but myself and Mike Corbett are still rocking a Nexus S and, for the most part loving it. Mike will be sure to tell you he’s been running some form of AOSP/SDK port of Jelly Bean on his 4G variant for a while now and whilst I’ve been doing the same; an OTA from Google is always a little bit sweeter. So, sorry Mike, on Sprint you’ll have to wait a while.
That’s right, the OTA update to 4.1.1 for the Nexus S has started to roll out in some regions, not a lot of regions but, that’s not a problem because, as usual, the community has got your back here and it’s now available for you to download and install. This is thanks to the myriad of folks over at XDA, it should be noted that the update seems to update from IMM76D of Ice Cream Sandwich – 4.0.4 – and for the i9020T/i9023 variants but, there are people that have built full ROMs from the update – with some tweaks – that work just fine. In fact, I’ve got one of these ROMs running on my Nexus lying on my desk and it’s pretty sweet. To find the OTA package visit this thread here on XDA and, if you’re looking for a full ROM with some tweaks then this is what I’m using right now. Both of these routes will require you to have a custom recovery such as CWM or TWRP but, let’s face it, if you have a Nexus you’re more than likely to.
The update itself is very smooth and is a notable improvement upon ICS on the Nexus S, the phone is now noticeably snappier and more responsive, Google Now works well and has already figured out a few things to present to me. Whilst voice search is a little slower, this is probably down to the single-core inside the S but, it works and it’s just as accurate – even with my British accent!
So, go and get some Jelly Beans and enjoy some sweet new code!!