Multitasking in Windows Phone 7? Maybe. Kind of...well it depends.

By Daniel Rubino
last updated

Over at "Doug's Blog" (you all know Doug, right?), he's taken the time to write a very detailed article on multitasking and Windows Phone 7.

A lot of the article is insider baseball, but it's more architecture than programming, so it's okay for even the part-time geek to understand . He focuses on how WP7 handles memory, background operations, suspending and resuming software, etc.

Really interesting stuff.

The big news though is what he reveals as possible with WP7. Some choice quotes to demonstrate: 

"The Windows Phone team made waves when the platform was introduced by indicating that, at least initially, Window Phone would not multitask 3rd party applications. The answer sounded pretty absolute. The actual implementation isn’t."

"So, while true multitasking doesn’t exist on the Windows Phone, applications can ‘borrow’ some background processing time as long as the system is lightly loaded."

Whether or not such "worker thread" caveats can be exploited by developers and get by the certification process by Microsoft remains to be seen. Overall though, it's a great read and a must for any of you enthusiasts out there.

Read "Windows Phone and Multitasking"

[via @windowsphone]

Daniel Rubino
Daniel Rubino
Editor-in-chief

Daniel Rubino is the Editor-in-chief of Windows Central, head reviewer, podcast co-host, and analyst. He has been covering Microsoft since 2007 when this site was called WMExperts (and later Windows Phone Central). His interests include Windows, laptops, next-gen computing, and for some reason, watches. Before all this tech stuff, he worked on a Ph.D. in linguistics, watched people sleep (for medical purposes!), and ran the projectors at movie theaters because it was fun.

5 Comments
  • You know, i would love cut/copy and paste to be there. It just helps in many ways. But more than this, I want a really exhaustively and intensively user-tested user interface. What I read about the Kin phones worries me that MSFT don't 'get it'. Winmo 6,5 evolved to its current state over years. MSFT is going to get ONE shot to make a success from WinPho.
  • Fair concern, but one thing we can say is with the Zune HD on the market and the critically well-received reviews of the UI, I think that is one area that they *will* nail. Plus, remember Metro has its roots going back to Windows Media Center (always praised for the UI), so it's not too new. Also developers have been enjoying the consistency within the development guidelines. App consistency seems the norm now. Kin is a different beast and a different development team within in MS, separate from the WinPhone one. They sprung that UI on us without much precedent.
  • That's great if multi tasking will also be on WP7.Now iPhone 4G is coming with all advanced features and the multi tasking capability.So I wish to see some thing new in this smart phone.
  • The metro interface grows old quickly. You're already seeing the limitations of the tile portion of the interface with Kin. Hubs look good when shown in their full glory on web pages but get chopped up in actual use. Typography wastes valuable space. White text on black background may save battery in OLEDs but is the opposite of normal printed material and is fatiguing.
  • actually, i think that to get 'black' on a screen takes the same amount of energy as getting 'white' on the screen.