Samsung i8910 HD runs 62 apps at once, multitaskers bow their heads

While iPhone 3G owners and would-be Windows Phone 7 buyers sit in the corner, quietly weeping over their lack of true multitasking, webOS and Symbian continue to point and laugh. In mid-January, a Palm Pre Plus was seen cackling with joy over its rivals' misfortune even as the device staggered under the weight of 50 simultaneous applications, and less than a week later, a Samsung Omnia HD performed the very same feat, despite having only half the Pre Plus' RAM (i.e. 256MB) to work with. Now, in what we can only interpret as a large middle finger and "come here" gesture to all who aspire to the cell phone multitasking heavyweight title, we have a video of the i8910 running no less than sixty-two applications thanks to a custom ROM by HyperX. Watch in stunned silence as a finger scrolls through them, right after the break.

[marmaduke Posted Apr 12th 2010 4:17PM]

I do not think i have had more than 15 apps installed simultaneously in a symbian phone, let alone 64 that I need to run at once.

That said, symbian is one of the most efficient OSes in this regard, I have not had any problem multitasking with 32mb ram except for heavy apps like tomtom

[Deaconclgi Posted Apr 12th 2010 7:47PM]

Nokia N82 Multitasks 66 Applications!!!!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n2LR22RFFOA

[sonicwind Posted Apr 13th 2010 12:08AM]

I'm bored with my iPhone now. I ran this one app earlier to day and and that's it, I ran this one app. See?

[politicalslug Posted Apr 16th 2010 12:43PM]

This is all moronic nonsense. I just read nearly 200 comments and not a single person gave a usage case that doesn't fit the managed multitasking available in iPhone OS 4.0.

One guy said running google maps in the background so his wife doesn't think he's cheating? He means latitude. That's a location feature that is available in OS4. Nobody leaves the GPS running in perpetuity on any mobile device. It kills the largest of batteries far too quickly.

Another guy said he needs multiple instant messengers to run at the same time. Why? OS4 pauses the IM app and for each new IM it pauses the current app and immediately (read in less than a second) opens the IM app(s) and voila... there it is.

Most of the crap in this 62 list is redundant. File manager. Task manager. Bluetooth services. Multiple media players. There are two compass programs and an altimeter program. The list goes on and on and it's nonsense. These aren't real apps. They certainly don't represent the ability of the OS to handle even a third that many practical applications simultaneously.

Will someone please give me a usage case that does includes 5 to 10 apps that have to be actively backgrounded in a fashion that doesn't fit Apple's OS 4.0 managed backgrounding scheme? Just 5 to 10. Give me a usage scenario. Otherwise every criticism of OS4 is moot and nonsense. So far as I can tell it allows the phone to work better given limited mobile hardware without limiting the functionality of multiple running apps.

Come on people. I'm waiting.

[JFH Posted May 24th 2010 10:20AM]

@politicalslug

Hi there,

Sorry I missed your little bit of literature on the benefits of an Iphone OS. The fact remains, that even though the implementation Apple choses to put in Iphone OS 4 will meet the needs of a good chunk of users, it is no real multitasking, plain and simple, and they NEED to do it this way because of the abysmal battery life the OS gives users. Of course, battery life depends on both HW &SW, and in the case of Apple we cannot compare Iphone OS 4 to any other hardware, but it still is not real multitasking. There are better OS's out there that have full multitasking that use less juice than Iphone OS3, let alone OS4, and give better battery life.

Aside from the fact, that only 1 app that you would like to background, that wouldnt use one of the "7 magical API's" would simply stop working: We only need a usecase of 1 app, that needs 1 thing the API's do not cover for this approach to be suboptimal for that user.

It creates issues in the long run as well, as the interaction between apps becomes more important, they will need to start adding API's to cover that. In that sense, it is like Adobe having control over flash upgrade path, but in reverse.

Also, notifications going through Apple's servers is not a good idea.

You state:

"So far as I can tell it allows the phone to work better given limited mobile hardware without limiting the functionality of multiple running apps"

It makes Iphone OS more useful, but other OS's manage limited mobile resources better. It is great tha Apple is trying to sell this as doing it right, but the only thing they are doing is improving something that was bad, and in doing so they are not even getting to the level the competition is in.

Thx.