Microsoft has been lagging behind Google and Apple in terms of their existing operating system. It seems that the mobile industry is looking for a platform that is focused on innovation as well as functionality. The upcoming Windows Phone 7 platform is, no doubt, innovative. In terms of functionality, one of the prominent advantages of both the iOS4 and the Android platforms is surprisingly missing in the Windows Phone 7.
That missing feature happens to be third party application multitasking. Unlike Apple’s iOS4, there is no way to simultaneously use two apps at once. The moment that you launch a new app, the first once is automatically terminated. It is truly a surprise considering the fact that Microsoft is aware of the fact that a lot of consumers are after multitasking, not only in mobile phones, but also in personal computers.
The announcement came from Mr. Yochay Kiriaty of Microsoft. He said that only a single application will be able to run in the foreground and all other background apps will be terminated. Say a game app is open, once the user tries to make a phone call, the game app is automatically close. Even by simply launching a picture browser, your current app will be closed.
“When a user navigates away from your application, either to a chooser like picture chooser, or to a launcher like phone call, Windows Phone operating system terminates your application.”
The only good news is that the last state of a particular app will be restored when the program is launched again. This may work for simple applications but for games and music apps, the lack of a proper third party multitasking is truly a big blow.
Hopefully, Microsoft has some sort of trick up its sleeve to increase the hype for their upcoming platform. After how the Kin duo fared, they really need it.
