Jelly Bean offers dozens of new features. For example, swiping your finger up the screen produces the Google Now screen: little “cards” bearing information it thinks you could use right now, based on your location, location history, calendar and Google searches. If you’ve recently searched for a sports team or a flight, for example, you see the latest scores or flight status. Weather, traffic and appointments are also part of this intriguing but only partly baked feature.

You can now save a city’s worth of Google Maps onto your tablet, so that you won’t need an Internet connection to navigate. That’s handy when you travel overseas.

Android’s talk-to-type feature can now work even without an Internet connection, too. (The iPad/iPhone can’t do that.) It works better if you’re online, but at least you get basic accuracy without a connection.

By far the most important change, however, is smoothness. Google engineers knocked themselves out trying to make Android 4.1 as responsive to your touch as, ahem, the other leading tablet. Animations all run at a supersmooth speed of 60 frames a second. Google says it tries to anticipate where your next finger touch will be, and begins to redraw the screen at that point.

Wow, does it work. Google’s tablet is now Applesque in its fluid touch response. All other makers of touch-screen gadgets should take note.

Sadly, Android giveth and Android taketh away. Using Jelly Bean, your tablet can no longer play Flash videos online, once an important advantage of Android over the iPad. Also, bizarrely, Jelly Bean removes the ability to turn your Home screen 90 degrees into landscape mode on seven-inch tablets.. It’s upright or nothing.