Windows phone 8

[Silent_Buddha]

So tell me what is the point of restricting devices when there is no need?

To prevent an non-tech oriented person from potentially tanking their battery life. If a person is running a game and task switches to an incoming call and forgets that their game was running as they talk for 10-60 minutes, for example.

Those of us on the forum would know to close the game, but a non-tech person? Maybe, maybe not. And why allow a game full access to the processor and hence battery power when there's no sane reason (other than perhaps an MMO) that I can think of to have it running versus tombstoned?

And while this is an extreme example, or at least I hope it's an extreme example, I've seen the task list for one of my customers on their phone and he must have had over 20 apps in the list. If those were all fully multitasked and actually using CPU power (most probably weren't), I can't imagine what it could do to his battery life.

Regards,
SB

 

[wco81]

Actually, a tech-savvy person would not try to use a mobile device the same way he would a full computer. Not just power, CPU, RAM and storage constraints but the fact of the small display makes trying to use a phone with the same multitasking context as a computer a fool's errand.

 

[french toast]

Well there is no need to imagine because I can tell you first hand.

If you run a big 3d game it will drain battery anyhow, and no me running 5-6 things in the background does not thrash the battery like you might think as exynos is very power efficient and it's the display that sucks the juice.

Ics has improved resource management and it isn't as bad as you might think, I thrash my phone and I still get a day out of it, and I net there is a couple of firmware updates to arrive yet.

When I peel the back off I still see plenty of room for an even wider battery pack..perhaps 3000mha? Which would be awesome.

So no this clap trap that people need apple's warm corporate arm round them, to protect there simple minds from these nasty power consuming features is nonsense.

So I ask the question..why?

 

[metafor]

To prevent an non-tech oriented person from potentially tanking their battery life. If a person is running a game and task switches to an incoming call and forgets that their game was running as they talk for 10-60 minutes, for example.

Those of us on the forum would know to close the game, but a non-tech person? Maybe, maybe not. And why allow a game full access to the processor and hence battery power when there's no sane reason (other than perhaps an MMO) that I can think of to have it running versus tombstoned?

And while this is an extreme example, or at least I hope it's an extreme example, I've seen the task list for one of my customers on their phone and he must have had over 20 apps in the list. If those were all fully multitasked and actually using CPU power (most probably weren't), I can't imagine what it could do to his battery life.

Regards,
SB

This hasn't been a problem in Android for at least 2 versions now. The background handler is actually quite aggressive with CPU intensive tasks. Games are killed almost immediately.

The biggest thing about Android thus far that's made its battery life worse than the iPhone has been their relatively larger screens. Android phones with smaller screens generally have a smaller battery than the iPhone.

With this generation, I'd argue that the various manufacturers have tuned their OS power management excessively; well beyond what iPhone does. Considering the One X pretty much matches the iPhone 4S battery life and yet has a much larger screen and similarly sized battery, I'd say the whole "restricted OS makes for better battery life" argument is pretty much bonked.

That being said, that doesn't mean battery life isn't a problem for all smartphones -- iPhone included -- when features such as the GPS, heavy gaming or mobile broadband data is in heavy use. I'd argue it's the hardware vendor's turn now to figure out how to lower the power on those in the worst case. Unfortunately, those happen to be very very difficult problems that are bound by physics.

 

[Silent_Buddha]

This hasn't been a problem in Android for at least 2 versions now. The background handler is actually quite aggressive with CPU intensive tasks. Games are killed almost immediately.

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

 

[metafor]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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/project-butter-and-what-it-means-for-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]

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]

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]

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.