Multiple user account support found in Android Jelly Bean

For those waiting to see multiple accounts on Android, there seems to be enough evidence for this possibility. So, in the future we could see the smartphone homescreen showing multiple account options like those we see on our desktops. The developers at XDA discovered that even with Jelly Bean you can activate a multi-user account function. A user named zanderman112 shows in a video how to activate this function on an Android device. The device he uses is a Galaxy S III running Jelly Bean. However, it is not recommended as it is not a complete function yet, and wont work smoothly. Still, this reveals that multiple user accounts exist in the Android code readily available from Google.

Multi-user accounts for Android

Currently, it works by creating a guest account with limited access. For example, the settings menu will be limited to Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, Sound, Display, Security (limited security), and About phone. Would the next Android version Key Lime Pie come with this feature? We think it should. The multi-user account may especially be a great feature while using tablets, and in case you share the tablet with your siblings or partner.

While we ponder the possibilities in Key Lime Pie and Jelly Bean, reports claim that the Android version 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich (ICS) hasn’t yet reached most of the users yet. The Android Gingerbread OS was quick enough to reach devices across the globe, but with ICS it has been otherwise. The latest distribution stats of different versions of the Android OS released by Google show that ICS has now spread to 15.9 percent of devices. The ICS user base was only 10.9 percent last month and 7.1 percent in June. Android version 2.3 Gingerbread still commands the major share, and runs on 60.3 percent of the devices. Android version 4.1 Jelly Bean, the latest, is present only on 0.8 percent of the devices. The reason behind this low start is that mostly Google's own devices are currently running on Jelly Bean. Most new devices are shipping with ICS out of the box at the moment, which has further contributed to the growth of ICS.

Surprisingly, in India, we saw the first batch of affordable tablets this year run on Ice Cream Sandwich. The latest post on the Raspberry Pi website also revealed that Android 4.0 is on the way. The team has put up a couple of pictures on the website showing that it’s indeed happening and they’ve managed to get ICS running on the miniature PC. According to the team, the hardware-accelerated graphics and video are running smoothly as of now. There’s even a short video that showcases the OS running on the hardware and given that it’s still in its initial stages, it’s not bad at all.

Here's the video by zanderman112: