We've definitely learned a ton about Windows Phone 7 Series here at MIX, but getting the full picture on multitasking has been difficult, since the OS isn't ready, no one has final hardware, and the emulator seems to behave differently than actual devices and Microsoft's descriptions. So let's set the record straight on multitasking: it's not going to happen, at least not in the traditional way. Not only have we directly confirmed this with Microsoft executives several times, but the developer sessions here are totally clear on the matter -- you don't tell 1000+ devs that they should expect their apps to be killed whenever the user switches away from them if you don't mean it. Now, that's not to say that the OS can't do multitasking: first-party apps like the Zune player and IE can run in the background, and third-party apps are actually left running in a suspended state (Microsoft calls it "dehydrated") as long as the system doesn't need any additional resources. If the user cycles back to an app, it's resumed ("rehydrated") and life continues merrily along, but if the user opens other apps and the system needs additional resources, the app is killed without any indication or remorse.
If that sounds familiar, it's because it's basically a single-tasking riff on Android and Windows Mobile 6, both of which also purport to intelligently manage multiple running applications like this, and both of which usually find themselves greatly improved with manual task managers. We'll have to see if Windows Phone 7 Series can do a better job once it ships -- we have a feeling it will -- and later down the line we'll see if Microsoft decides to extend multitasking to third-party apps. But for now, just know that you're not going to be running Pandora in the background while you do other tasks on a 7 Series device -- it is a question we have specifically asked, and the answer, unfortunately, is no.
P.S. Still don't believe us? Hear it for yourself directly from Microsoft's Todd Brix:
I really need palm to survive. Multi-tasking on the pre is awesome and it has become a normal function listen to slacker, check e-mail, respond to a text ect. All while slacker is still playing. I was hoping that if palm went under WM7 would take over where my webOS phone had left off. Now if palm goes down the crap hole. I have no idea what shitty ass phone OS I'll get stuck with. Don't tell me android either in my opinion even though android has been around longer I feel that they need to catch up to WebOS.
sent from my Palm Pre while listening to slacker and responded to an e-mail from my work account and also my gmail account
@maxxorz what the hell are you talking about? Do you even know how WebOS works? The card system it uses to multi-task? Or do just like looking like a douch bag? If your talking about because it's CDMA the Pre has wifi. Still sent from my Palm Pre
@burnblue Exactly, for god sake. There's no point on multitasking except for some applications, like Pandaro, or Last.fm.
Every other scenario is better covered with "suspended state" and notifications (IM for example, and Microsoft isn't using Apple's pitiful notification system, it seems more android/webos-like).
You guys really need to keep your pants on. First off this isn't a final build so nobody really knows how this will pan out. Second, this is almost the Multi-Tasking I want in a phone. I want to be able to choose which third party apps are fully multitasked. If they can make that change in the near future it will be the best implementation of multi-tasking I've seen. Leaving tons of apps running requiring the user to manage the tasks is just useless on a device where processor cycles, memory, and battery life are so limited. It's obvious they are trying to find the best way to get this done... if they even come close to my idea it will be fantastic.
That is ridiculous. Microsoft fans used to rag on PalmOS for doing basically the exact same thing (only making it optional). PalmOS apps all had an integrated database/registry/table that stored the application state, so when you switched back, it would (if coded to standard) brought you back to where you were. That design dates pre-smartphone, all the way back to 1996. I was just thinking earlier that PalmOS Cobalt, the OS that got torn apart until Android basically did the same thing (but with java instead of C++) had gotten a bum deal, but this is just ridiculous. If you don't know how good multitasking can be on a smartphone...you haven't had the pleasure of good multitasking. I can play solitare on my phone during a boring conference call. I can also open my email and look something up right there on my phone. I don't have to desperately get back to my computer or wait for a laptop to boot up. I just open the mail app, my phone call is still going, and it's all right there. I can listen to pandora while reading email on my phone. I get notifications for email and calls while I'm playing a game and can switch away, and the OS automatically cuts the sound for the game and puts it on hold. That is what I expect out of a smartphone OS in 2010...faked out multitasking is what I expected out of a smartphone 5 years ago. And in the mobile arena, 5 years is the equivalent of 20.
Ok just posing something that probably has been said..... Apple and microsoft complain about multitasking draining battery... Knowledgeable consumers want multitasking... Let me know if I make sense.. Can they not have a switch in there phone that turns multitasking on and off like you can do with 3G on the iphone with a warning on battery life, so normal people who dont know much about phones can have it off saving battery life and those with a more advanced look on phones can have it on... do i make sense?? Is it possible??? Replies wanted lol
Funny comments in this thread. You can always pick out those that don't pay that monthly cell bill every month. The people shouting out that one brand is better than another and cannot spell out specifics as to why, most certainly are not paying the bill every month. lol. Anyway, of all the Windows 7 series phone, my number one criterion is that I don't have to deal with dropped calls.
So No AT&T for me, I don't care what handset they sell.
Beyond that, I don't care if my music mutes if someone calls me. That's what it supposed to do. 15 year olds and those who have not progressed beyond adolescence may disagree. The phone is not what defines who I am or how I get stuff done. Its purpose is to make and receive calls. A "smart" phone gives me additional functionality to the net. But it is a cell phone, a monthly bill and part of my very tight budget.
The Windows 7 Series phone will be awesome even if it isn't everything tech heads may want from it. My prayer is that it doesn't become an AT&T exclusive. If i does I'll never own one.
The more I think about it, it seems like the only multitasking that the majority of people want is Pandora and/or some other music streaming app. Keep in mind that the Zune player does run in the background, and Zune does have Smart DJ. Albeit Smart DJ doesn't make selections as well as Pandora, it still has all the content Pandora has through Marketplace (if you have a Zune pass.) Not only that, but you could stream any song that you like for that matter through Marketplace. And if you already have A Zune and subscribe to it, upgrading from an HD to a WP7S is a no brainer. All MS is trying to do is enclose their ecosystem even more, so they can make more $$$. But what company doesn't do that?
It's still not too late for MSFT to buy Palm and get the patents and IP. Hell at this point, the vulture capitalists would probably let him have it at cost plus 10%.
I wonder why they are having such problems or avoiding the option of implementing true multitasking. My old beat up e71 (ok, not that old :P ) has no problems multitasking. Web browser, music, MS office, calendar, and probably more all at once, for the past 5 years it seems like it also...
What it means is that there will be no Flash ads running in the background, consuming your memory, the CPU cycles and, ultimately, the battery. :-D
From the user perspective there will be no difference, except that the apps won't do calculations in the background. It is a good way to limit memory swapping and CPU wasting. It's still multitasking, but it is cooperative, not time-shared/preemptive/real-time multitasking.
Similar concepts have been used in COM+ since 1999 and later in the Orchestration engine, where the word "dehydration" appears to have appeared for the first time.
Wait, when WP7S was announced it they said that Pandora was going to integrate into the Zune Node almost as if it was an extension of Zune. But Zune is able to run in the background. . .
WTF Microsoft? First copy and paste and now no streaming music?
If Apple was doing what msft is doing here in copying the iPhone, the same people loving msft for doing it would have called 'bloody murder' and apple fans would be disappointed. When it comes to user experience this simply proves that apple us held to a higher standard. Which they probably like.
We all knew the iPhone 3gs was a benchmark product. Android and now win pho 7 simply prove it. Now apple needs to take it up a notch with 4.0.
If the only way to install programs on a WP7-series phone is through their marketplace why can't MS let the developer apply for one of two states, "service" or "main". Some things like Pandora, Google Maps, chat clients etc could be given the "service" flag and allowed to run in the background but only if they are so well designed that their impact on battery and cpu is minor. Every other program would have to deal with this suspend-thingie.
So Symbian^3 looks better and better every minute...
By the way: Does multitasking really killing your battery? Only if it's handled wrong. Only if programs are open and active who shouldn't be open. Or does a backgrounded "Contacts"-programm consume energy while doing nothing? My Nokia5800 with open but idled browser, dialer, running screen and protocol (and, of course, the "Energy Pro."-programm which i couldn't use if my phone wouldn't support multitasking in the first place) consumes 0,63W (or 170 mA, don't know which is more important) If I close all unneeded apps it consumes: exactly the same.
So what have we learned? Multitasking does kill your battery not by excisting, it drains power if it's used, if you let your phone calculate pi in the background. With the same arguments you could ban the display, it does also consume a lot of energy if it's used a lot...
@user47alpha this is the general trend of the dumbing down of smart phones. they do this because they know some of us U.S users that aren't use to true multitasking a la symbian will unknowingly leave many applications running in the background then complain later that things become sluggish.
people that look at engadget would not do such things but ms are trying to reach out to the whole public.
a sucky trend to say the least. even android does not do true multitasking.
So how is an instant messenger client going to work with this scenario? It won't that's how...unless you want to use whatever IM client MS has built into the OS and their service -- ie forcing you to use MSN \ Windows Live. What a bunch of garbage. EU, Please sue them because that is NOT fair. It's even WORSE than forcing people to use MSIE on Windows, because any 3rd party IM client simply can't function under these circumstances. Oh, and what happens if I want to send a friend a link via IM? How am I going to copy and paste it? This OS is looking crappier and crappier with every new article. See you later Microsoft, you really screwed this one up BIG time and you definitely screwed all the WM users who have stuck with you for so many years. Big middle finger in the air, and up your ass Steve Balmer.
Listening to Pandora and doing something else is definitely an option. All Pandora has to do is pass of the music stream to Microsofts internal media player. Some Iphone apps do this, passing a music stream to quicktime, but its not that graceful and once it is done, the app looses control of the stream. However Microsoft can avoid that with proper api access.
I think some reconciliation needs to happen, because what is said in the audio clip above doesn't seem to line up with what Joe Belfiore said in one of the sessions at Mix10. From that, I got the impression that multitasking is supported in Windows Phone 7 to the extent that the developer of an app uses the ability to integrate with the multitasking foundation created by Microsoft. Watch this video from MIX10 around the 30 minute mark to see how this could work (http://live.visitmix.com/MIX10/Sessions/CL01) In the demo, the volume button being hit on the side of the phone brings up a menu allowing you to skip or pause the tracks as well. This would allow an app like Pandora to multitask perhaps even in a better way than what users are accustomed to in Android or Windows Mobile (pre-Windows Phone 7).
For a phone, multi-tasking isn't a huge deal for me. A tablet, absolutely, but a phone? Not nearly as much. I mean, I'd like for IE to load up in the background while I check my text messages and what not, but that's not a huge deal, and I've never been a fan of Pandora or anything like that. Just let me listening to my Zune music on storage while I do other stuff and I'm set.
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posted March 17th 2010 8:34PM
I really need palm to survive. Multi-tasking on the pre is awesome and it has become a normal function listen to slacker, check e-mail, respond to a text ect. All while slacker is still playing. I was hoping that if palm went under WM7 would take over where my webOS phone had left off. Now if palm goes down the crap hole. I have no idea what shitty ass phone OS I'll get stuck with. Don't tell me android either in my opinion even though android has been around longer I feel that they need to catch up to WebOS.
sent from my Palm Pre while listening to slacker and responded to an e-mail from my work account and also my gmail account
@rowehc
If you were doing all that at the same time, how did you hit the send button? Bluf: Called.
@maxxorz
what the hell are you talking about? Do you even know how WebOS works? The card system it uses to multi-task? Or do just like looking like a douch bag? If your talking about because it's CDMA the
Pre has wifi. Still sent from my Palm Pre
Re: Pandora
The guy specifically said that if you use their APIs then your 3rd party music player will be able to play background music.
@burnblue Exactly, for god sake. There's no point on multitasking except for some applications, like Pandaro, or Last.fm.
Every other scenario is better covered with "suspended state" and notifications (IM for example, and Microsoft isn't using Apple's pitiful notification system, it seems more android/webos-like).
You guys really need to keep your pants on. First off this isn't a final build so nobody really knows how this will pan out. Second, this is almost the Multi-Tasking I want in a phone. I want to be able to choose which third party apps are fully multitasked. If they can make that change in the near future it will be the best implementation of multi-tasking I've seen. Leaving tons of apps running requiring the user to manage the tasks is just useless on a device where processor cycles, memory, and battery life are so limited. It's obvious they are trying to find the best way to get this done... if they even come close to my idea it will be fantastic.
I had such high hopes for 7 series. This makes me wounder...
What ever happened to the ITG xpPhone? It was a lil big, but had potential.
@Einlander Stop killing Nilay!
That is ridiculous. Microsoft fans used to rag on PalmOS for doing basically the exact same thing (only making it optional). PalmOS apps all had an integrated database/registry/table that stored the application state, so when you switched back, it would (if coded to standard) brought you back to where you were. That design dates pre-smartphone, all the way back to 1996. I was just thinking earlier that PalmOS Cobalt, the OS that got torn apart until Android basically did the same thing (but with java instead of C++) had gotten a bum deal, but this is just ridiculous. If you don't know how good multitasking can be on a smartphone...you haven't had the pleasure of good multitasking. I can play solitare on my phone during a boring conference call. I can also open my email and look something up right there on my phone. I don't have to desperately get back to my computer or wait for a laptop to boot up. I just open the mail app, my phone call is still going, and it's all right there. I can listen to pandora while reading email on my phone. I get notifications for email and calls while I'm playing a game and can switch away, and the OS automatically cuts the sound for the game and puts it on hold. That is what I expect out of a smartphone OS in 2010...faked out multitasking is what I expected out of a smartphone 5 years ago. And in the mobile arena, 5 years is the equivalent of 20.
Looks like webOS is still the KING of multitasking.
Ok just posing something that probably has been said..... Apple and microsoft complain about multitasking draining battery... Knowledgeable consumers want multitasking... Let me know if I make sense.. Can they not have a switch in there phone that turns multitasking on and off like you can do with 3G on the iphone with a warning on battery life, so normal people who dont know much about phones can have it off saving battery life and those with a more advanced look on phones can have it on... do i make sense?? Is it possible??? Replies wanted lol
@Omegakaos89
Rumor has it Apple may be planning such an option for 4.0.
my god, so much windows 7 series phone spam. Wheres the "I DON'T GIVE A CRAP ABOUT THIS ANYMORE BUTTON THAT EXCLUDES W7S"
where are all the haters that complained about the ipad?
Funny comments in this thread. You can always pick out those that don't pay that monthly cell bill every month. The people shouting out that one brand is better than another and cannot spell out specifics as to why, most certainly are not paying the bill every month. lol. Anyway, of all the Windows 7 series phone, my number one criterion is that I don't have to deal with dropped calls.
So No AT&T for me, I don't care what handset they sell.
Beyond that, I don't care if my music mutes if someone calls me. That's what it supposed to do. 15 year olds and those who have not progressed beyond adolescence may disagree. The phone is not what defines who I am or how I get stuff done. Its purpose is to make and receive calls. A "smart" phone gives me additional functionality to the net. But it is a cell phone, a monthly bill and part of my very tight budget.
The Windows 7 Series phone will be awesome even if it isn't everything tech heads may want from it. My prayer is that it doesn't become an AT&T exclusive. If i does I'll never own one.
@TechBlogger
Do you work for Microsoft?
Well at least we're getting some answers
Isn't this pretty much exactly what people bitched about years ago on Garnet (PalmOS at the time), too?
The more I think about it, it seems like the only multitasking that the majority of people want is Pandora and/or some other music streaming app. Keep in mind that the Zune player does run in the background, and Zune does have Smart DJ. Albeit Smart DJ doesn't make selections as well as Pandora, it still has all the content Pandora has through Marketplace (if you have a Zune pass.) Not only that, but you could stream any song that you like for that matter through Marketplace. And if you already have A Zune and subscribe to it, upgrading from an HD to a WP7S is a no brainer. All MS is trying to do is enclose their ecosystem even more, so they can make more $$$. But what company doesn't do that?
Full multitasking just kills your battery faster. A semi apporach like the one WP7 makes more sense.
T. Brix needs to go out the same was hNs 'Brix' did in Team America...
"Do you have any idea how faaking busy I am Hans Brix?!?"
Just think when iPhone OS 4.0 is released, Windows Phone 0.7 Series will be even *further* behind than it already is.
It's still not too late for MSFT to buy Palm and get the patents and IP. Hell at this point, the vulture capitalists would probably let him have it at cost plus 10%.
I wonder why they are having such problems or avoiding the option of implementing true multitasking. My old beat up e71 (ok, not that old :P ) has no problems multitasking. Web browser, music, MS office, calendar, and probably more all at once, for the past 5 years it seems like it also...
what the hell no multitasking and no copy and past WTF!
What it means is that there will be no Flash ads running in the background, consuming your memory, the CPU cycles and, ultimately, the battery. :-D
From the user perspective there will be no difference, except that the apps won't do calculations in the background. It is a good way to limit memory swapping and CPU wasting. It's still multitasking, but it is cooperative, not time-shared/preemptive/real-time multitasking.
Similar concepts have been used in COM+ since 1999 and later in the Orchestration engine, where the word "dehydration" appears to have appeared for the first time.
Object Pooling and COM+ JIT Activation (1999)
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms678959(VS.85).aspx
Dehydration and Rehydration (2004)
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee253540(BTS.10).aspx
All this has happened before and it will happen again. :-}
Wait, when WP7S was announced it they said that Pandora was going to integrate into the Zune Node almost as if it was an extension of Zune. But Zune is able to run in the background. . .
WTF Microsoft? First copy and paste and now no streaming music?
WP7S went from must have, to sucks.
If Apple was doing what msft is doing here in copying the iPhone, the same people loving msft for doing it would have called 'bloody murder' and apple fans would be disappointed. When it comes to user experience this simply proves that apple us held to a higher standard. Which they probably like.
We all knew the iPhone 3gs was a benchmark product. Android and now win pho 7 simply prove it. Now apple needs to take it up a notch with 4.0.
If the only way to install programs on a WP7-series phone is through their marketplace why can't MS let the developer apply for one of two states, "service" or "main". Some things like Pandora, Google Maps, chat clients etc could be given the "service" flag and allowed to run in the background but only if they are so well designed that their impact on battery and cpu is minor. Every other program would have to deal with this suspend-thingie.
sounds good to me. no real reason to be disappointed.
So Symbian^3 looks better and better every minute...
By the way: Does multitasking really killing your battery? Only if it's handled wrong. Only if programs are open and active who shouldn't be open. Or does a backgrounded "Contacts"-programm consume energy while doing nothing?
My Nokia5800 with open but idled browser, dialer, running screen and protocol (and, of course, the "Energy Pro."-programm which i couldn't use if my phone wouldn't support multitasking in the first place) consumes 0,63W (or 170 mA, don't know which is more important)
If I close all unneeded apps it consumes: exactly the same.
So what have we learned? Multitasking does kill your battery not by excisting, it drains power if it's used, if you let your phone calculate pi in the background. With the same arguments you could ban the display, it does also consume a lot of energy if it's used a lot...
@user47alpha this is the general trend of the dumbing down of smart phones. they do this because they know some of us U.S users that aren't use to true multitasking a la symbian will unknowingly leave many applications running in the background then complain later that things become sluggish.
people that look at engadget would not do such things but ms are trying to reach out to the whole public.
a sucky trend to say the least. even android does not do true multitasking.
So how is an instant messenger client going to work with this scenario?
It won't that's how...unless you want to use whatever IM client MS has built into the OS and their service -- ie forcing you to use MSN \ Windows Live. What a bunch of garbage. EU, Please sue them because that is NOT fair. It's even WORSE than forcing people to use MSIE on Windows, because any 3rd party IM client simply can't function under these circumstances. Oh, and what happens if I want to send a friend a link via IM? How am I going to copy and paste it? This OS is looking crappier and crappier with every new article. See you later Microsoft, you really screwed this one up BIG time and you definitely screwed all the WM users who have stuck with you for so many years. Big middle finger in the air, and up your ass Steve Balmer.
You want full multitasking on a device?
I have an answer for you....1 Letter...3 Numbers
N900.
N900 is King of multi-tasking!
Listening to Pandora and doing something else is definitely an option. All Pandora has to do is pass of the music stream to Microsofts internal media player. Some Iphone apps do this, passing a music stream to quicktime, but its not that graceful and once it is done, the app looses control of the stream. However Microsoft can avoid that with proper api access.
I think some reconciliation needs to happen, because what is said in the audio clip above doesn't seem to line up with what Joe Belfiore said in one of the sessions at Mix10. From that, I got the impression that multitasking is supported in Windows Phone 7 to the extent that the developer of an app uses the ability to integrate with the multitasking foundation created by Microsoft. Watch this video from MIX10 around the 30 minute mark to see how this could work (http://live.visitmix.com/MIX10/Sessions/CL01) In the demo, the volume button being hit on the side of the phone brings up a menu allowing you to skip or pause the tracks as well. This would allow an app like Pandora to multitask perhaps even in a better way than what users are accustomed to in Android or Windows Mobile (pre-Windows Phone 7).
For a phone, multi-tasking isn't a huge deal for me. A tablet, absolutely, but a phone? Not nearly as much. I mean, I'd like for IE to load up in the background while I check my text messages and what not, but that's not a huge deal, and I've never been a fan of Pandora or anything like that. Just let me listening to my Zune music on storage while I do other stuff and I'm set.