San Francisco—Google unwrapped the long-anticipated “Jelly Bean” release of Android kicking off the Google I/O conference here as well as a new tablet, the Nexus 7.

Offline voice typing was one of the new features announced that users can use to type when there is a poor data connection. That announcement drew huge applause from the crowd. 

Jelly Bean will also feature improved touch responsiveness by doing a better job of coordinating with the device’s processors. “Jelly Bean puts the full power of the CPU at your fingertips,” said Google’s engineering director, Dave Burke. 

Vic Gundotra, Google's SVP of Engineering, set the table for the news revealing some new stats related to Android adoption rates. Last year at Google I/O the company said 400,000 Google devices are activated daily; today Gundotra announced that number has grown to a million a day or about 12 new Android device activations around the world every second. 

Jellly Bean’s new camera app lets you review photos you’ve taken quickly in a film strip format that lets you move between images with your finger.

Google announced Jelly Bean will be available as an over the air update to Samsung Galaxy and a range of other Android devices staring in mid-July. A software development kit for developers is available starting today. 

The Google Nexus 7 tablet

“It’s always been the goal of Nexus to provide the best Android experience,” said Barra. “We wanted to take that one step further and and let you immerse yourself in all that great content.

“We partnered with Asus to build just such as device.” 

The Nexus 7 tablet features a 1280 x 800 display, Tegra 3 chipset with quad-core CPU, and 12-core GPU, for games. There's also a fast, front facing camera, WiFi, Bluetooth, and NFC.  The Nexus 7 features up to nine hours of HD video playback on a single charge, and weighs under 12 ounces—the weight of an average paperbook.

Starting today, the Nexus 7 is available in the Google Play store for $199, with orders shipping in mid-July. The purchase price includes a $25 credit to spend in the Google store. 

“When you power it on your content is front and center, what you were reading last. It’s ideal for reading books,” said Google’s Chris Yerga.

He also showed off a new version of the Google Play storefront that now includes TV shows and movies for purchase or rent as well as magazines.