[reeneebob]

The problem with Android multi-tasking is that you have no control over what's running in the background or not. That's the most frustrating part for me. For instance, I am downloading the gazillionth update from Google Play (another problem I have with Android), and I multi-task over to the browser. I'm surfing the web and checking out websites. After a while, all downloads stop, and i'm like wth. You go back to Google Play, and Android stopped the app because the browser needed to use the RAM. The thing about BB10 (and on PlayBook) is that the user has control. Some people might not care, but to me it's a huge deal.

What phone did that? I've had a Galaxy S i9000M, HTC Desire Z and currently a GS3 and that has never, ever happened to me in all the years I've had android devices.

Sent from my Galaxy S 3 via JB 4.2.2 - thanks Tasks AOKP!

[pb1379]

The problem with Android multi-tasking is that you have no control over what's running in the background or not. That's the most frustrating part for me. For instance, I am downloading the gazillionth update from Google Play (another problem I have with Android), and I multi-task over to the browser. I'm surfing the web and checking out websites. After a while, all downloads stop, and i'm like wth. You go back to Google Play, and Android stopped the app because the browser needed to use the RAM. The thing about BB10 (and on PlayBook) is that the user has control. Some people might not care, but to me it's a huge deal.

Google play is on my list of the worst apps ever seen. It has lots of issues, and I'm really mad at Google for not fixing it. However, its problem is not related to Android's multitasking, it's simply a bad program. If you restart your phone, Google play resumes its downloads, but even then, with the phone being idle, it often fails (it also often fails on the server side, btw). My humble guess is they have some timing problems in it, besides not handling exceptions gracefully, but that's just a guess. This said, really crap.

As of the drawbacks of the fully automated memory and task management, it indeed has its drawbacks, as you mentioned, you don't have any control over it (well, you do, but not in an end user apt way), your phone may get "congested". By limiting the number of apps (and obviously, the amount of memory each app is allowed to use), this is solved in BB10. But it also means you're wasting memory by reserving it.

Both schemes have their advantages and drawbacks, I tend to agree with you that limiting is the better approach. That's one of the advantages BB10 has for only running on today's hardware. Back when Android started, this would have been a completely inept approach, remember those phones had 256 MB ram, or even less.

BB10 has this advantage to be looking to the future instead of fixing the past, which makes it really attractive.

Afterthought: if I'm not mistaken, HTC actually takes that approach on their Android phones, limiting the number of active user apps to six.

Sent from my XT925 using Tapatalk 2

[reeneebob]

That option is also on the Sammy phones, under development options. You can set it to unlimited processes, 6, 4, and kill as soon as you exit an activity.

Sent from my Galaxy S 3 via JB 4.2.2 - thanks Tasks AOKP!

[pb1379]

That option is also on the Sammy phones, under development options. You can set it to unlimited processes, 6, 4, and kill as soon as you exit an activity.

Sent from my Galaxy S 3 via JB 4.2.2 - thanks Tasks AOKP!

True, didn't think of that. It's basic functionality starting with jelly bean. Thanks for reminding me

Sent from my XT925 using Tapatalk 2

[reeneebob]

True, didn't think of that. It's basic functionality starting with jelly bean. Thanks for reminding me

Sent from my XT925 using Tapatalk 2

It's on ics too.

Sent from my Galaxy S 3 via JB 4.2.2 - thanks Tasks AOKP!

[pb1379]

It's on ics too.

Sent from my Galaxy S 3 via JB 4.2.2 - thanks Tasks AOKP!

Lol, yeah, you're right as always! I live messing them up because they didn't increase the major release from 4 to 5.

Just for fun I tried it meanwhile and it's unfortunately not as good as thought. HTC does limit the number of user started apps (foreground apps with views), same as BB10, while the dev setting apparently applies to any app. Services started to disappear

Might be particular to my phone and setup, but I now get while it's under dev settings...

Sent from my XT925 using Tapatalk 2

[reeneebob]

Lol, yeah, you're right as always! I live messing them up because they didn't increase the major release from 4 to 5.

Just for fun I tried it meanwhile and it's unfortunately not as good as thought. HTC does limit the number of user started apps (foreground apps with views), same as BB10, while the dev setting apparently applies to any app. Services started to disappear

Might be particular to my phone and setup, but I now get while it's under dev settings...

Sent from my XT925 using Tapatalk 2

I never had it do it to system processes, only user apps on the gs3... Weird if HTC does that.

Sent from my Galaxy S 3 via JB 4.2.2 - thanks Tasks AOKP!

[pb1379]

I never had it do it to system processes, only user apps on the gs3... Weird if HTC does that.
Sent from my Galaxy S 3 via JB 4.2.2 - thanks Tasks AOKP!

Well, not system processes, but user background (only) apps.

Glad it works for you on the S3, though :thumbup:

Sent from my XT925 using Tapatalk 2

[Ndoki Hasaki]

I just wanted to say after reading this thread I decided to go to my youtube song playlist (believe it or not, not ALL youtube videos are for watching, many don't even have video, I know, it's crazy) and played a song. I then minimized it and decided to play some games (jetpack joyride being my newest hook) with my own custom youtube soundtrack.

No downloading of songs required, no split screen crap. It was awesome. I'll definitely be using this a LOT.

[goldie335]

I just wanted to say after reading this thread I decided to go to my youtube song playlist (believe it or not, not ALL youtube videos are for watching, many don't even have video, I know, it's crazy) and played a song. I then minimized it and decided to play some games (jetpack joyride being my newest hook) with my own custom youtube soundtrack.

No downloading of songs required, no split screen crap. It was awesome. I'll definitely be using this a LOT.

If you ever get a 5'5 inch screen you'll know the split ain't crap.

[goldie335]

The problem with Android multi-tasking is that you have no control over what's running in the background or not. That's the most frustrating part for me. For instance, I am downloading the gazillionth update from Google Play (another problem I have with Android), and I multi-task over to the browser. I'm surfing the web and checking out websites. After a while, all downloads stop, and i'm like wth. You go back to Google Play, and Android stopped the app because the browser needed to use the RAM. The thing about BB10 (and on PlayBook) is that the user has control. Some people might not care, but to me it's a huge deal.

Stop using clair. Since fro yo no phone does that. Especially ones with even 1 gig of ram on android.

[sf49ers]

The problem with Android multi-tasking is that you have no control over what's running in the background or not. That's the most frustrating part for me. For instance, I am downloading the gazillionth update from Google Play (another problem I have with Android), and I multi-task over to the browser. I'm surfing the web and checking out websites. After a while, all downloads stop, and i'm like wth. You go back to Google Play, and Android stopped the app because the browser needed to use the RAM. The thing about BB10 (and on PlayBook) is that the user has control. Some people might not care, but to me it's a huge deal.

Stop using clair. Since fro yo no phone does that. Especially ones with even 1 gig of ram on android.

what he said is 100% correct, Despite these visual improvements, though, the core functionality remained unchanged. Active Frames in BB10 aren’t just screenshots of an app’s state; they were active, live windows into what an app was doing in the background. That’s not the case in Android ICS or Jelly bean. Cards in the ribbon are just static screengrabs of an app’s last state.Furthermore, swiping the apps off the launcher doesn’t always close them.

Actually, removing an entry in recent tasks will kill any background processes that exist for the process. It won’t directly causes services to stop, however there is an API for them to find out the task was removed to decide if they want this to mean they should stop. This is so that removing say the recent task of an e-mail app won’t cause it to stop checking for e-mail

It makes sense, of course, for a core app like email to continue performing needed background tasks even when it’s been dismissed from the task list … but this inconsistent experience isn’t confined to core apps like those. It’s up to the app to decide how much of itself it wants to close down once you swipe its card off the ribbon. So how each app behaves is dependent on its own whims. Sometimes the app will close and sometimes it won’t.

[meltbox360]

i never said anything about videos. I did with jetpack joyride, shawdowgun and galaxy on fire. All pause

Its due to the devs pausing their own apps when minimized. Check the docs.

[Just Me]

Scenario: you are probably one of twelve people on planet earth that do what you just stated.

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I317 using Tapatalk 2

I am one of those 12 people too. I guess I never appreciated just how good my PB was because I never bench marked it against the competition.

I often take multitasking a step further by launching my setting menu, connecting to my BlueTooth speakers and transfering the sound output without interrupting my stream. Then I return to typing on my CN10 app.

Posted via CB10

[goldie335]

what he said is 100% correct, Despite these visual improvements, though, the core functionality remained unchanged. Active Frames in BB10 aren�t just screenshots of an app�s state; they were active, live windows into what an app was doing in the background. That�s not the case in Android ICS or Jelly bean. Cards in the ribbon are just static screengrabs of an app�s last state.Furthermore, swiping the apps off the launcher doesn�t always close them.

Actually, removing an entry in recent tasks will kill any background processes that exist for the process. It won�t directly causes services to stop, however there is an API for them to find out the task was removed to decide if they want this to mean they should stop. This is so that removing say the recent task of an e-mail app won�t cause it to stop checking for e-mail

It makes sense, of course, for a core app like email to continue performing needed background tasks even when it�s been dismissed from the task list � but this inconsistent experience isn�t confined to core apps like those. It�s up to the app to decide how much of itself it wants to close down once you swipe its card off the ribbon. So how each app behaves is dependent on its own whims. Sometimes the app will close and sometimes it won�t.

Android widgets update live as well. It isn't limited to open tiles in Os10. Not sure where you got that.

[LuvULongTime]

So can you give me another useful scenario that that the SGS3 or Note can't replicate?

I want my phone to be able to multi task like my desktop OS. Download a torrent in the background while surfing the web. Play a game of temple run while downloading a large file from a website, etc, etc. It goes on and on. Bottom line, blackberry does this out of the box.

[greatwiseone]

What phone did that? I've had a Galaxy S i9000M, HTC Desire Z and currently a GS3 and that has never, ever happened to me in all the years I've had android devices.

Sent from my Galaxy S 3 via JB 4.2.2 - thanks Tasks AOKP!

I have a HTC Amaze. Basically same spec's as the PlayBook. Dual-core 1.5hz processor and 1Gb RAM.

Now that I'm back on my Amaze after being on the dev alpha for a month, I'm even more frustrated by the multi-tasking on Android.

I was browsing on a website using the built-in browser, screen turned off and phone went on standby, and when I turned the phone back on, the browser had to reload the website! I had to wait for the webpage to load again. Yes, it took me back to where I was on the webpage, but I had to wait for a couple of seconds for the webpage to load. This is because the app is RELOADING after being suspended by Android.

I don't use ANY widgets on my phone because of all the background processes that result. The reason why the widgets can update is because it has small background processes running (i.e. Push service for the various apps). You run out of RAM pretty fast, and once you don't have a lot of free RAM left, you are essentially not fully multi-tasking (since your other apps are suspended or terminated by Android).

I know in some circumstances, Android does FULLY multi-task like BB10. I've had a couple of occasions where I am video calling someone on Skype and I switch to another app and the video call is still going on and I can chat through it. My problem is that I don't know for certain which apps can do this and which app doesn't, and what conditions are needed to let me keep a couple of apps running concurrently.

At the end of the day, it's a user preference. I like my phone to be like my laptop. Other people don't care so much, but the multi-tasking is a HUGE reason why i'm ditching Android.

[LuvULongTime]

Scenario: you are probably one of twelve people on planet earth that do what you just stated.

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I317 using Tapatalk 2

I do this all the time on my desktop and look for the same functionality in a mobile OS as well. Count me as one of the 12 people on earth that do this.

You now sound like the BBRY fanboys that say instagram isn't important because nobody uses it. Multitasking isn't important because only 12 people on the planet use it. If you say so...

[greatwiseone]

Stop using clair. Since fro yo no phone does that. Especially ones with even 1 gig of ram on android.

Ya, apparently I'm using eClair on a HTC Amaze (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Htc_amaze), which by the way was HTC's flagship phone at end of 2011 and I'm on ICS.

I do agree that 2Gb RAM does seem to help, but when I bought my phone with 1Gb RAM, I expected the multi-tasking to be SIGNIFICANTLY better.

For people who thinks Android multi-task the same way as BB10, the easiest app that illustrates this is the music player. When you launch the music player and play a song, a notification pops up in your notification menu indicating that are playing a song.

If I quit the app using the swipe out action, the music still plays. That tells you that the app actually launched background/protected processes to prevent the music player from stopping when you are multi-tasking. But because of this, when I REALLY want to quit the music app, I have to go to the notification area, stop the music from playing there, and then quit the music app. On BB10, it's one process. I quit the music app, music stops playing. That's it.

[greatwiseone]

Android widgets update live as well. It isn't limited to open tiles in Os10. Not sure where you got that.

Android widgets update LIVE because there are background processes that run to update the widgets. Go check the running processes in the settings menu. It tells you all the information there. All this stuff eats into the RAM.

[LuvULongTime]

And it definitely doesn't sound like Android is for you...it's not for everyone. You will probably be happier with one of the more simple OS's you mentioned. There's nothing wrong with that.

Lol. Android is for intellectuals. Just ask Admorris. He'll tell you.

[Ndoki Hasaki]

If you ever get a 5'5 inch screen you'll know the split ain't crap.

Pretty sure I'd still prefer a 4.2" fullscreen app than two 2.75" apps running at the same time.

[andyj1967]

Posted via CB10

[goldie335]

I want my phone to be able to multi task like my desktop OS. Download a torrent in the background while surfing the web. Play a game of temple run while downloading a large file from a website, etc, etc. It goes on and on. Bottom line, blackberry does this out of the box.

Bottom line. And I'm doing them both at same time...so does my note 2

[goldie335]

Ya, apparently I'm using eClair on a HTC Amaze (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Htc_amaze), which by the way was HTC's flagship phone at end of 2011 and I'm on ICS.

I do agree that 2Gb RAM does seem to help, but when I bought my phone with 1Gb RAM, I expected the multi-tasking to be SIGNIFICANTLY better.

For people who thinks Android multi-task the same way as BB10, the easiest app that illustrates this is the music player. When you launch the music player and play a song, a notification pops up in your notification menu indicating that are playing a song.

If I quit the app using the swipe out action, the music still plays. That tells you that the app actually launched background/protected processes to prevent the music player from stopping when you are multi-tasking. But because of this, when I REALLY want to quit the music app, I have to go to the notification area, stop the music from playing there, and then quit the music app. On BB10, it's one process. I quit the music app, music stops playing. That's it.

There you have it. HTC amaze was amazingly bad. Note 2 with 2 gigs of ram does it all..and then some.