There’s been a lot of talk about how multi-tasking on Windows Phone “Mango” might be implemented, and basically it will rely on background tasks. The ability for apps to run when they are in the background, or even under the lock screen. Ultimately if an app is coded correctly it can run, while other apps are in focus, and resume as if it had never been in the background at all. Leaving a seamless transition from what you are looking at now, to tapping and holding the back arrow and picking from one of the recent apps you have been using in the app scroll. Apps have to have background tasks enabled though. Any app that is thus enabled, will be able to
“the apps in this list can continue to do things in the background, even when they’re not open”.
By the time that Mango is officially released to users, there should be a lot more applications that support this functionality in the marketplace. We’ve already seen the way Windows phone handles your recent app history by holding the arrow button. and that’s what you can think of as the fast app switcher.
As there are not really a lot of third party apps enabled to run in the background as yet, all native apps are enabled in the Mango Beta, we get some idea of the functionality. In a great video from MSDN, Channel 9, Peter Torr demonstrates how exactly multi-tasking is meant to work on the platform.
In this episode, I meet with Peter Torr, from the Windows Phone Application Platform Team to specifically focus on the new multi-tasking support that “Mango” will enable. Peter also shares a few details on his favourite feature of “Mango”—its ability to organize your contacts together in “groups,” which makes it easier for you to keep track of, and interact with, the people important to you
Check the full video from Channel 9 below
Interestingly enough, the video gives us another look at that mystery HTC handset, that could be the Mazaa, a similar device in dimension to the Mozart and Trophy, that may have a 12 Mpx camera. With no real announcements from HTC as to what their new Windows Phones will look like, this could be a prototype, developer phone, just for testing. While we wait for the sweet flesh of Mango to hit, sometime in late September, we can only be tantalised by demo’s like this.
