Android 4.2 faces transparency glitch

With Android 4.2 rolling onto Google devices, a number of users are reporting another issue that is seen on tablets running this latest operating system from Google. According to a post on Google Code, users have expressed that there is a strange issue while using a secondary account—the wallpaper and icons bleed through a running application, thereby giving it a strange transparent appearance.

Commenting on the issue, a user of Android 4.2 Jelly Bean who spotted this glitch stated that in many applications, the desktop wallpaper and icons bleed through. He stated that this abnormaility is witnessed in 50 percent of his games and is seen in apps such as Flick Golf, Osmos HD, Sword & Sorcery, Eufloria HD, among others. He states that it could be because he was the secondary user of the device and not the owner.

The background is bleeding in the foreground app

A report by Android Police has listed a temporary fix for it and states, “There is a (kind of) solution, though: if the game is also installed on the primary account, the issue no longer occurs on any of the secondary accounts. Remove the game from the primary, and the issue returns. It's quite bizarre.”

This issue has been noticed by other users as well and a Reddit thread confirms its existence.

It had been recently reported that though Android 4.2 Jelly Bean might be the latest version of Android yet, users who have updated from Android 4.1 are facing a bevy of problems. Apparently, users of the Nexus 7 and Nexus 10 are facing issues with performance and Google Talk after upgrading to Android 4.2.

Google hasn’t confirmed anything yet, but going by the posts on the XDA Developers forum, it seems the performance lag is caused by the Google Currents app. Now, we don’t have a Nexus 7 to actually test it out, but users are reporting that turning off the background sync on Google Currents and re-booting the device fixes the problem.

Android 4.2 brings multi-user support for the first time to smartphones and tablets, with which users can create multiple user accounts and use the device as independent users with different IDs. But it seems even this feature is buggy. It appears the OS only allows users defined as the ‘Owner’ of the device to use Google Talk, whereas other users get an error message stating, "This version of Talk can be used only by the owner of the device." This may be due to the current Google Talk app not being compatible with multiple users. Google is yet to comment or acknowledge this issue.

These are not the first bugs to be found on Android 4.2. It recently came to light that Google had forgotten to include December in the People/Contacts app, which comes as a stock application in Android. Google has only added 11 months in the calendar year. After November 2012, comes January 2013.

However, Google quickly acknowledged the bug and is in the process of releasing a fix for it by dishing out a minor update in the form of Android 4.2.1 to certain Nexus devices to fix this bug. "We discovered a bug in the Android 4.2 update, which makes it impossible to enter December events in optional fields of the People app (this bug did not affect Calendar). Rest assured, this will be fixed soon so that those of you with December birthdays and anniversaries won't be forgotten by your friends and family," the company wrote in a post.

Several posts on XDA forums suggest that the fix is currently available only for the latest Nexus devices such as the Nexus 4 and Nexus 10. However, one should expect other Nexus devices such as the Nexus 7 and the Galaxy Nexus to get the update soon enough.

According to posts by users of the latest Nexus devices, the update is just 1.1MB in size and the build is dubbed JOP40D. The major feature of this version is that it addresses the December event glitch that had been prevalent in the earlier build of Android 4.2. With this update, all other features remain the same as the previous version.

As of now, Google is yet to comment on the latest glitch that has been discovered with Android 4.2.