Did anyone notice that Android doesn’t support multitasking?

Stefan Constantinescu

Stefan Constantinescu (@WhatTheBit on Twitter) has loved technology since as far back as he can remember. It started with computers, but in the past few years his passion has turned to mobile devices. As a mobile phone enthusiast who lives and breathes devices that connect to the internet, he knows he is not alone with this radical fascination of all things wireless. He is strongly opinionated and enjoys a good debate so leave comments in his posts and he’ll get back to you! Stefan began blogging as a hobby in the fall of 2006 and joined IntoMobile in the summer of 2007. Later he got a job at Nokia in March 2008, but as of June 2009 he has rejoined the IntoMobile team. He is currently based out of Helsinki, Finland.

• Nop

  Something worse if it’s final: No native application support! Only java apps.

• JaXX

  This is early access, and a way to keep the platform secure at the very beginning is to keep the apps far from the core system… it’s a first shot again

  As the whole thing is open nothing should prevent anybody of building a closer to core application (look at the layer stacking in the first of the three vids) But that’ll come with a wider release of the whole sdk, this one is high level (but already gives a wide enough subset to start spitting out tools for and BY the masses)

  As for multitasking, it seems to be multitask in a way… it relies alot on state saving/freeing so when calling an app needs ressources, it can “freeze and save” a pausable app… smells pretty Java-ish to me and though I love coffee it’s not my kinda stuff, though I already tried brewing stuff in my Eclipse !

• Will Park

  Looks like it’ll multi-task by way of saving application states as long as there’s enough space for all the processes.

  Still, I expected more.

• olly

  Make sure that you all aren’t getting Java apps and J2ME apps confused… J2ME apps, like the Gmail app on Symbian/S60 phones, are slow, don’t have as much access to the phone, etc… because they have to be run through a compatibility framework.

  Java apps as native apps, on the other hand, are a much different animal, and would run just like a .sisx on S60 would.

  As for the multitasking thing, that will SUCK if it’s the case… hell, even the freakin Sidekick can multitask.

  -olly

• Antoine of BH/MMM

  Here’s something for you to consider:
  If the OS is designed right, and each of the apps are able to access the data needed independent of the attending apps, then multitasking as desktop OSes have taught is nearly not needed. Combine that along with the ability to correctly save-state, and you have the correct (IMO) paradigm for how to develop mobile applications.

• ads

  do you even understand the vids stefan?

• William

  Will take a lokk on SDK and find out what this is.

• Stefan Constantinescu

  Yea ads, check it out here:

  http://code.google.com/android/intro/lifecycle.html

  quote:

  “An important and unusual feature of Android is that an application process’s lifetime is not directly controlled by the application itself. Instead, it is determined by the system through a combination of the parts of the application that the system knows are running, how important these things are to the user, and how much overall memory is available in the system.”

• JaXX

  It ain’t worse than process killing on Symbian when another app needs to free memory… because on Symbian, you won’t get the same state back. There’s a “Don’t suicide Me” Flag hopefully but well.

• nooby

  Am I the only one still thinking OpenMoko is still the better Linux platform?

  I agree with Stefan: Nice idea, but the current approach is incomplete. But with Google financing the stuff Android will have some time to mature.