And today Android 4.2 is finally available. As millions of other geeks I rushed to install it my Nexus 7, mainly because I was eager to try out the multiuser functionality.
I have to admit I’m impressed with the amount of changes 4.2 brought : Multiuser, new drop-down menu, screensavers, lock-screen widgets, Photo Sphere – a lot of things for a minor update.
Only thing that really disappointed me, was that it’s not possible to share applications between users in the same device. I had to add my a second google account to the second user so I could install some paid apps – and unfortunately there’s a small bug in this function – even though there’s an account selector, it keeps the last added account as the selected account…
If you have a Nexus 7 and don’t want to wait for the OTA, there’s a very easy procedure you can follow:
- Download this file
- Connect the nexus to the computer
- in a shell type : adb reboot recovery
- when the android with the exclamation point is on the display press power and the center of the volume key at the same time
- select “apply update from ADB”
- in the shell type : adb sideload 094f6629314a.signed-nakasi-JOP40C-from-JZO54K.094f6629.zip
(in case you don’t have the Android SDK installed you can use this ZIP from Android Central which contains all files you might need)