[metafor]

Originally Posted by Silent_Buddha

In other words, basically the same as tombstoning an application. So while it gives the illusion of always available multitasking it'll take steps to curtail any real multitasking of un-approved (non-whitelisted or blacklisted) application types that might utilize the CPU in the background?

It's starting to sound more and more like Android is moving to be more like iOS and Windows Metro. Give the users the illusion of multitasking but take steps to prevent unapproved CPU useage in the background.

Regards,
SB

The difference is that apps are able to opt out of being insta-killed without having to fit their background activity into the "one-of-the-allowed-activities" mold. The benefits of of "true multitasking" has never been to have non-background-task type activities hog up CPU cycles -- it's such that applications have more freedom for what a "background task" is.

Of course, that opens up avenues for a lot of misuse by apps; but I'd rather that kind of thing be filtered in the app store rather than the OS.

One major benefit I notice with "true multitasking" is the browser. If there's enough RAM, webpage tabs aren't insta-killed like they are in iOS; even though the tab itself isn't really using any CPU time. I hate it when I go to another app -- especially when network speeds are somewhat slow -- and then having to reload the page (losing everything I put into input fields) when I switch back.

Other things involve allowing video players to save their place -- again, since it pauses the playback, no CPU time is being used -- when I swap to a phone call, etc.

I know iOS does some things to somewhat replicate these functionalities. But Safari sucks at caching things it should and the only video player available in iOS (unless you jailbreak) doesn't play enough video formats. If you jailbreak and install VLC, the program has no idea it's being killed and thus, never saves its place.

Windows Phone does a more elegant single-task enforcement in that at least they save the application state instead of just forcing a quit.

[french toast]

My sentiments exactly..tombstoning is a redundant idea in 2012.
Restrictions to save the oem money.

[french toast]

Wco 81: Not true I can do everything I want on this screen.
And if I want a bigger one? I can connect it via wifi direct to my 46inch hd tv, or even dock it to the tv with a usb extension and add all sorts of extras such as 500gb harddrive, wireless keyboard and mouse, 7.1 surround sound...etc...

The future is one device for everything, with a pocketable device that has 1gb ram, quad core OoO processing, powerfull gpu alongside gobs of bandwidth... its practically already here.

[wco81]

How does this save them money?

[french toast]

Originally Posted by wco81

How does this save them money?

Because that system is less resource intensive, in 2012 there are plenty of resources to stick in razor thin phones and get good battery life, however the parts needed are more expensive...bigger hd screens = more battery costs, large ram+ multitasking= more battery and more cpu cores.

None of that benefits the consumer.

[wco81]

Yeah stick in a bigger battery so you have a brick or a 2 by 4?

[french toast]

Originally Posted by wco81

Yeah stick in a bigger battery so you have a brick or a 2 by 4?

Have you not read anything I have wrote? I've said my razor thin and light android phone get brilliant battery life...as there is room for another 50% in the same chassis..where are you getting brick from?

The lumia 900 is a brick..around 12mm of solid plastic, which is fine if you want to bang some nails In with it, it is substantially heavier,it has a smaller battery...a smaller low res screen...half the ram, a quarter of the cores and a gpu That's 6-8 times as weak..
Yet the restrictive tombstoning does not give it better batterylife..in fact it's much worse.

How about some objective rationale... less of the baseless Microsoft and apple hype jobs.

[joker454]

Originally Posted by french toast

How about some objective rationale... less of the baseless Microsoft and apple hype jobs.

How about general phone performance? I haven't used the most recent android phones, but anytime I have tried an android phone it just never felt as smooth as my windows phone. That's a personal pet peeve, I can't stand it when the interface and general use isn't smooth and slick. I always found it odd that android phones never ran as well as my Titan windows phone considering how much more hardware they pack than my Titan phone does, but I presumed it was due to the android os trying to do too much, like how it handles multi tasking.

[Mariner]

Originally Posted by joker454

How about general phone performance? I haven't used the most recent android phones, but anytime I have tried an android phone it just never felt as smooth as my windows phone. That's a personal pet peeve, I can't stand it when the interface and general use isn't smooth and slick. I always found it odd that android phones never ran as well as my Titan windows phone considering how much more hardware they pack than my Titan phone does, but I presumed it was due to the android os trying to do too much, like how it handles multi tasking.

The lack of 'slickness' should be greatly reduced on the latest and greatest Android phones.

However, this hasn't been a priority for Android until the recently announced "Project Butter" which is part of Jellybean - Android 4.1:

http://thedroidguy.com/2012/06/proje...or-jelly-bean/

This should improve the responsiveness of the UI a fair bit. The problem, as always with Android phones, is how many devices will be upgraded to 4.1. It sounds as though Jellybean isn't such a huge leap over Ice Cream Sandwich (4.0) so perhaps we'll see the 'Butter' improvements appear relatively quickly on devices which already have 4.0 support?

[french toast]

Originally Posted by joker454

How about general phone performance? I haven't used the most recent android phones, but anytime I have tried an android phone it just never felt as smooth as my windows phone. That's a personal pet peeve, I can't stand it when the interface and general use isn't smooth and slick. I always found it odd that android phones never ran as well as my Titan windows phone considering how much more hardware they pack than my Titan phone does, but I presumed it was due to the android os trying to do too much, like how it handles multi tasking.

Yes I have praised the performance of wp and ios, which you will note has nothing to do with multitasking setup, and everything to do with the ui priority due to them being far newer.

At least for my android phone it is very fast and reasonably slick, with only the odd stutter when heavy multitasking.
This will only improve with android 4.1 which really concentrates on that area.

As noted the fragmentation is quite simply beyond a joke now, and will be the reason I would consider wp8.

[wco81]

So it's like a flapjack or a big waffle then. They spread the battery out over a bigger footprint instead of making it thicker.

[french toast]

Yes you utilise the full width of the phone.

[Xmas]

Originally Posted by metafor

One major benefit I notice with "true multitasking" is the browser. If there's enough RAM, webpage tabs aren't insta-killed like they are in iOS

If there is enough RAM, no tabs get dropped.

If you jailbreak and install VLC, the program has no idea it's being killed and thus, never saves its place.

Windows Phone does a more elegant single-task enforcement in that at least they save the application state instead of just forcing a quit.

iOS notifies applications that enter background state or get terminated. If an application doesn't manage to save its state, it's the application's fault.

[metafor]

Originally Posted by Xmas

If there is enough RAM, no tabs get dropped.

I've not noticed this on the multiple iPhones I've used. In fact, I can't remember a single time I've gone back into Safari and had the page already loaded. Perhaps it's different on iPad with 1GB of RAM.

iOS notifies applications that enter background state or get terminated. If an application doesn't manage to save its state, it's the application's fault.

Again, that's not something that should be required of the app.

[Lazy8s]

iOS tends to hold its spot and its buffer/cache on videos, like within the YouTube app, better than ICS when switching among apps. While part of that may be design, the more efficient multitasking resource usage probably helps for benefits like that.

[Lazy8s]

Both my iPhone 4 and iPad 2 (both 512 MB devices and on iOS 5.1) usually hold multiple Safari tabs even when jumping among multiple apps that can include Google Earth and YouTube, provided I don't load up large volumes of data across multiple of them.

[metafor]

I have never been able to get the page to stay on a b3d forum post. Nor on fark pages. I've noticed Chrome tends to reload the page a lot as well as opposed to the stock Browser.

[silent_guy]

Originally Posted by metafor

I have never been able to get the page to stay on a b3d forum post. Nor on fark pages. I've noticed Chrome tends to reload the page a lot as well as opposed to the stock Browser.

On an iPad 1, this was definitely true. Not so on later versions.

[wco81]

iPad 3 is reloading tabs. But the pages load fast so not really a big deal.

[Lazy8s]

... unless you typed a lot of text into fields you hadn't yet submitted.

[Xmas]

Originally Posted by metafor

I've not noticed this on the multiple iPhones I've used. In fact, I can't remember a single time I've gone back into Safari and had the page already loaded. Perhaps it's different on iPad with 1GB of RAM.

It obviously depends on which and how many apps (and tabs) you're using, but at least for my usage tab reloading is actually a rare ocurrence on an iPhone 4.

Again, that's not something that should be required of the app.

The OS does not know which data the application needs to keep to be able to restore its current state. To do it transparently you'd have to write all allocated memory to disk, as well as store information to recreate resources. Somehow I doubt many users would appreciate several gigabytes of frozen apps taking up disk space.

Originally Posted by Lazy8s

... unless you typed a lot of text into fields you hadn't yet submitted.

Which is definitely a flaw that should be fixed. Browsers with crash recovery/session restore show that it can be done even when reloading is required.

[Simon F]

Originally Posted by Xmas

It obviously depends on which and how many apps (and tabs) you're using, but at least for my usage tab reloading is actually a rare ocurrence on an iPhone 4.

Out of curiousity, how much memory does your iphone have?

[RudeCurve]

I have two tabs open in Safari on my iPhone4 that's been there for weeks. Sometimes it reloads when I switch to the Safari app but not all the time.

[Xmas]

Originally Posted by Simon F

Out of curiousity, how much memory does your iphone have?

iPhone 4 has 512 MiB.

[french toast]

For basic phone stuff and some browsing etc tombstones has been shown to work well enough in a media device as long as lots done properly.

I suppose it all depends on what the actual advantages to the consumer such a limitation gives them....no one here has actually given me a concrete benefit to the consumer over full blown multitasking...none.

In my eyes it is just a limitation so the hardware vendors can stick weaker processing in, less ram and smaller batteries.

The batterylife to the consumer is pretty much locked to a full days worth....these restrictions bring no benefits to consumers.
Period.