What do you mean your smartphone runs on jelly beans?

I love when television and radio commercials drop techno lingo on people and expect everyone to know what it means. I’m pretty sure that half of the people reading this still don’t know the difference between 3G and 4G LTE.

And here we go again with Android devices. The new “blah blah blah” smartphone now running Android 4.1 Jelly Bean. Does the average consumer really know what they mean by Jelly Bean? Or do they think their new smartphone comes with a bag of jelly beans? Or that they have to feed their smartphone jelly beans to keep it performing in top condition?

Well wonder no more because I’m about to break down the techno lingo barrier between techies and noobies. Android is a smartphone operating system developed by Google. And developers of techie stuff like operating systems love to come up with code names to describe the project they are working on.

And because Google is, well, Google, their developers decided to use alphabetical names of food for each new release of the Android operating sytem. Think of it like hurricane names except with food.

It didn’t catch on to use the code name as the actual release name until the third release of the Android operating system but ever since then we’ve been “treated” to Cupcake, Donut, Eclair, Froyo, Gingerbread, Honeycomb, Ice Cream Sandwich and yes, now Jelly Bean.

So while the “boring” people at Apple continue to use traditional numbers for their iPhone operating system (known as iOS) like 4.6, 4.7, 5.0, 5.1, 5.2, 5.3, 6.0 and 6.1, Google marches along with its fun food names. Ok, technically Google still uses the boring numbers (ex: 4.1 Jelly Bean) but most techies just refer to the major number by its food name.

What’s next for Android and the letter k? Rumor has it we should get ready to enjoy some Key Lime Pie.

As for the whole 3G vs. 4G LTE thing, just know that 4G LTE is a LOT faster.