Want a phone that you can multitask with? So far there are three platforms that make a decent stab at incorporating multitasking, so we’ve taken each one to bits to see how it works.
iPhone iOS 4
Fonehome summary — “lots of style, enough substance for most”
Apple has taken a very canny approach to multitasking, avoiding it altogether until certain that it wouldn’t adversely affect the user experience of the iPhone as a whole. Even now the super-powered iPhone 4 has hit the scene, multitasking is still constrained, limited to a strict set of functions rather than letting developers do exactly what they like.
The main uses for multitasking in iOS 4 are playing music in the background, allowing GPS to function while doing other things, receiving notifications from an app when within a different app and quickly switching between apps. All apps need to be updated before they can make full use of these multitasking features.
iPhone 4 multitasking is relatively organised, but still not entirely comprehensible from the off. You access multitasking apps from a special menu that pops up when you tap twice quickly on the home button. It appears at the bottom of the screen as a scrollable horiztonal list of app icons — like a conveyor belt in a sushi restaurant. The confusing bit is that all your apps appear in here to start with, whether they can multitask or not, making it seem like a second apps menu rather than a real multitasking tool.
However, you can remove icons from here if you like, by holding a finger over one until a red minus sign appears at the corner of each — then just tap the minus. We can understand why Apple would make this secondary menu as inclusive as it is —
If they didn’t, multitasking would seem even more limited than it actually is, highlighting how few apps are fully compatible with iOS 4 multitasking (at least at launch)- Even without multitasking, the bottom loader menu is still handy for launching apps quickly, without heading back to the main home screen
iOS 4 multitasking is designed for the audience that Steve Jobs has in mind. For most peoples’ uses, such as streaming music or internet radio, it’s fab and works flawlessly, but it won’t necessarily be enough to please power users.
Android
Fonehome summary — “You can’t control it much, but it is there”
Android multitasking is powerful, but messy and frequently confusing. It’s been there from the start but most of it happens where you can’t see, and you have very little control over it.
In some Android 2.1 phones, you have some pretence of control over multitasking, but really it’s a mirage. Hold onto the home button and a menu will pop up showing you the latest apps your phone has run, but it doesn’t necessarily mean they’re still running. Only a few app types show up in the Android standard pull-down menu, such as music players and email apps (through notification messages), so that’s not a full multitasking control panel either.
Android multitasking may not sound like much cop, but it’s effective in its own shambolic way. It allows apps to run in the background very easily, which is great for apps that benefit from “push style” notifications, such as social networking apps. Download an Android task manager like Advanced Task Killer and you may be surprised at what’s running on your phone at any one time.
Android multitasking is geared towards developers rather than users, but that doesn’t mean we don’t benefit from it. Perhaps the worst bit about Android multitasking is that it can leave your phone chugging along if you have lots of apps installed, as they occasionally try to update themselves — hence why we often recommend downloading a task manager app like Advanced Task Killer.
WebOS —
Fonehome summary — “the closest you can get to a desktop computer here”
After seeing the Palm Pre in action, we were saddened to see Palm all-but bite the dust. However, if HP’s plans to rejuvinate the Palm WebOS come to fruition, it shouldn’t be too long until we see the platform come back, fighting fit.
WebOS multitasking is imbued with the slick feel of an Apple production, but isn’t constrained like iOS 4. For quick switching between apps, you can’t beat WebOS.
Once you’ve loaded up an app, a quick tap on the central button (on a Palm Pre, at any rate) zooms out slightly, letting you see a shrunken view of the app running while having access to the phone’s basic interface. Do the same again — boot up another app and then tap the central key to zoom out — and you can flick between the two apps with a quick swipe, and jump back in to either in a fraction of a second.
You can repeat this process almost ad infinitum. We’ve had more than a dozen apps running alongside each other in this fashion. We have a feeling WebOS probably halts the app’s processes while zoomed-out because no matter how many apps you have “running”, sweeping between apps remains fluid. Even if it amounts to a quick-switching trick, as used in Apple iOS 4, the feeling it delivers isn’t that far off switching between windows on a PC. Impressive. Now we just need to see WebOS made popular in a successful phone…
YOU SHOULD READ — How to make the perfect smartphone OS — deconstructing Android, iOS 4, WebOS…
