See the reference from Android projet : yes, a software using a service (so it is divided in client+server way) can run in background without limitations, in theory.

Anyway, from what I knew and I recently learned, the Android (4.0) "multitasking" has the drawbacks :
- the UI of Android "multitasking" is misleading, showing suspended/closed softwares and not showing running softwares : it is just a list of recent used softwares;
- internal Android "multitasking" <> Linux desktop multitasking;
- Android "multitasking" agressively puts softwares in suspended mode (to save battery and CPU use);
- a software using services can be in background without limitations, but it can be cumbersome for the developer to separate the software in client+server, and the service cannot update the UI (user interface). Many Android softwares don't use services so they are suspended arbitrarily;
- to confirm : Android developer documentation assumes there is no swap memory available, so with limited RAM (128MB-1GB RAM nowadays) of Android devices, softwares are simply closed when the RAM is not enough.

iOS & WP7 "Fast App Switching" are a lot worser than Android "multitasking".

Interesting observations about how Lumia fares in the US and the UK.

http://blogs.barrons.com/techtraderd...d=yahoobarrons

The article states that Nokia's Lumias do fairly well at AT&T in the US. A different analyst claims that Lumia gets very little love in the UK and by extension in Europe.

I'd say it paints another gloomy picture for WP, Lumia and Nokia. Not succeeding in Europe, being a distant second on AT&T only in the US. How do they do in China? Who will buy the millions of Lumias per quarter necessary to breath some life into Nokia and its Shares?

Nokia's shares are trading around $3.20 on the NYSE, down more than 2.5% for the day.

And sorry for being on topic.

China won't like closed source WP with NSA-backdoors.
That is why Huawei and China Mobile have joined Tizen Work Group.

I have the same opinion and experience : with the same softwares, documents and sites open in Android 4.0.4 ICS (Asus Transformer TF-101 dual core @ 1 GHz with 1 GB RAM), Nokia N9 (@ 1 GHz with 1 GB RAM), Nokia N900 (@ 600 MHz with 256 MB RAM + 768 MB of swap memory), only on Android I have sometimes softwares closed, web pages reloaded, documents back to the 1st page, videos restarted, etc. It is 10-20% of the cases, but it is very annoying and unpredictable. So I cannot trust Android "multitasking".

All this talk about multi-tasking has me wondering... why don't the operating systems that do the better multi-tasking sell the most?

I mean, seriously. Answer that folks. It's like concentrating on a point that the majority of the folks out there - don't be dismissive by stating that you don't care what the masses do/buy, it does affect what is supported, favorite or not.

So with that said... multi-tasking isn't always the most sought out feature. Continue down this semantic-laden conversation; however people are looking for other things than what is important to the majority of us it seems.

For me Android's multitasking is good enough and also maybe better than "real one" because the many non expert users. Android's one cause of success is that it also try to be a OS for a "common people".

More it bothers me, that there is no POSIX-environment in Android if someone wants to port desktop-Linux-applications to Android. It is not so easy as it was for Maemo. (There is a possibility to install Fedora or Ubuntu on Android though, but it is not the same thing as the applications at least currently do not run as natively as Android-apps.)

Therefore I really hope, there will be a Tizen+Android hybrid, which will have both.

And I do think Android applications are as fast and good as Qt-applications. Qt itself is rather heavy and Java/Dalvik VMs are getting better and better runtime optimizations when there will be more RAM-memory in mobile devices.

http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=345105.352548

look at twitter now!! Tomi ahonen debating with 'someone'

Well, for one thing, the big almighty iSteve reinvented singletasking. If you see a task manager, they blew it.

Nobody ever bought a phone because they heard it had superior multitasking. Also, nobody who haven't had a maemo phone, will ever believe it to be better than Android in any respect.

But the N900 did get a few good reviews for the multitasking.

I quite liked the N900 with it's keyboard and glove support. It had some huge basic flaws, it's not a mass market phone. But with the priority Nokia never gave it, maemo could have become a quite good OS.

Windows phone doesn't seem to be a mass market product yet either...


Tapped on a galaxy tab 10.1. I'd rather have the new note. For the stylus.
...

I see Nokia talking back to Ahonen as being an exception from their policy on such issues. And there's a bit of discussing semantics there too.

Ahonen is clearly costing Nokia money. We can all agree on that. Also, he is less than objective, which is natural with his background. Third, he clearly hates Elop and does nothing to hide it, to a point where sanity turns to a relative concept. Fourth, he has a very un-diplomatic way of bringing out his message.

Now, back to the reason why he costs Nokia money:

Five: his analyses are pretty much always spot on. A bit of eccentricity doesn't take away his expertise. That's why objective, non-Elop-hating analysts still listen to Tomi's every word even KNOWING the four first points.

If Nokia Spin Division fights back in public like this, they're on a slippery slope. They can discredit him, but it's a high profile fight.

Hopefully, they also take the criticism seriously instead of turning into argument tennis mode.

If I were Nokia I would try to hire Ahonen now for a small project, maybe $100k. After all he is consultant by profession. He'd have to sign an NDA and would have to stop to blog about Nokia specifics.

Costs less money and energy than to fight him publicly.