Jelly Bean 4.1 update confirmed for Samsung Galaxy S2

Samsung has confirmed that its older Samsung Galaxy SII Android smartphone will be getting the latest iteration of the Android OS, Jelly Bean, in the coming months. Samsung Korea revealed details of the update on its official site, but the company did not state when the update will land on users smartphones.

The update itself is looking to be a big one with the download only being available through the Samsung Kies desktop software, and the upgrade process has been confirmed to take at least an hour to complete. This is due to the sheer size of the Jelly Bean 4.1 update that at 1GB in size will see an internal memory reduction on the Galaxy S II from around 12GB to 11GB.

This basically means that 1GB of storage space will be lost on the phone which will be used for a system partition.

However, the new features that users will get should help ease the memory loss pain as the S2 will gain access to Google Now and Google’s excellent Project Butter for speedy usage, plus built in Google+, Google Play Books and Google Play Movies.

What’s more, Samsung is throwing in a few of its own excellent TouchWiz software updates that we have seen on the recent Galaxy SIII and Galaxy Note 2, including the Smart Stay feature which prevents the screen from timing out when you’re looking at it. Additionally, the Camera app will allow users to pause while recording video, plus the Pop-Up Play functionality will also be added which allows users to continue enjoying a video whilst also emailing, texting or browsing the web.

The Galaxy S2 is still a popular handset so the update will be a welcome one for many users, but with no word on exact dates we are still going to have to sit and wait.