Google leaves the month of December out of Android 4.2 Jelly Bean

When launching a new version of an operating system, one can expect there to be some errors that we consider normal, or in the case of the new Android version, a mistake so huge that it is hard to believe that it actually happened. What happened? Google completely forgot to include an entire month in the calendar that is used with the contacts and events.

Imagine that you want to add your friend’s birthday as a new event connected to his/her contact information on your device equipped with the all-new Jelly Bean 4.2, and that your friend’s birthday is in Decemeber. Right in that moment you will realize that December doesn’t exist in this Android update. In any year. That being said, other Google Calendar related service aren’t experiencing this error when used from an Android device.

On November 27th, a small 1.1 MB patch for Jelly Bean was released to fix this “little” slip up, which is being distributed during the next few days on Nexus 4, Nexus 10, and presumably on the Nexus 7 and Galaxy Nexus a short time later.

So, Jelly Bean 4.2 will possibly be the version of an operating system with the shortest life in history, becoming Jelly Bean 4.2.1, or “JPO40D” as it has come to be known on the Internet. It is rumored that this version will also fix some minor errors in Bluetooth connectivity, the new face recognition technology FaceLock, and the Google voice search.

Would such a slip up ever happen with the rival company Apple? Just two months ago, in October of this year, Apple made an entire hour disappear from the space-time continuum in one of its iOS updates–2:00am, to be specific.

The big question that comes to mind is how could a mistake of such enormous proportions come to be in the production process within a company with so many resources. There isn’t an explanation. Google is a very large enterprise and I would bet my life that in the Android department alone there is an entire army of quality analysts and beta testers. Could this have been Google’s way of avoiding the end of the world prophesied by the Mayans?