Windows Phone 7 doesn’t multi-task? Right………..

One of the complaints leveled at the Windows Phone 7 operating system and one of the main points used to vilify Nokia’s decision to switch their primary strategy to Windows Phone is the absence of multitasking. For many users, myself included, it’s absence is much more than an annoyance especially when one considers that user-facing multitasking is not just an intrinsic part of every other modern smartphone operating system (iOS included) but also a part of the way we all interact with the world on a daily basis.

Of course much like iOS in its earlier iterations, Windows Phone 7 does not support any semblance of multitasking 3rd party apps outside of the ability of such apps to play audio in the background and occasionally save their states. I say occasionally because strangely not all apps seem to do so or at least not consistently (I’m looking at you Amazon, Facebook and Twitter).

Strangely enough, it looks like the ability to turn on multi-tasking or at the very least pseudo-multitasking is but a number change away, LITERALLY. The following video highlights the ability of Windows Phone 7 to very quickly switch between a number of running applications without having to reload the application state from ROM. It would appear that all applications are running somewhat simultaneously and there were no major slow-downs or crashes as a result.

What appears to be happening is the “tombstoning” process is being disabled, allowing applications to stay in a somewhat open state regardless of whether they’re active. Tombstoning in  Windows Phone 7 is what happens to any and all 3rd party applications written for the platform. When an application is no longer in the foreground in Windows Phone 7 a state file corresponding to what the application was displaying and the user’s last interaction with the application are stored to a log file attached to that program and stored in ROM. After a certain time period, the application process is terminated and thus has to more or less restart but uses the state file in the log to restore the previous application state.

Literally changing a “3” to a “0” is enough to enable this “hack” and unfortunately requires a “developer-unlocked” device which seems to be unavailable unless you’re a registered Windows Phone developer. Kinda sucks especially when you consider that it seems that you have to pay for the privilege.  Having seen this I have to wonder how much else is present in Windows Phone 7 but currently turned off for one reason or other.

In any case, we’ll be trying this out for ourselves and getting back to you just as soon as we figure out how to properly unlock our own devices and back them up in case of failure and crashes. Does this news change your opinion on Windows Phone 7 at all? Sound off below.

Thanks Arts
 

Via Windows Phone Central

Tags: Multitasking, NoDo, Update, Windows Phone 7, WP7

Category: Nokia