Available through the Cydia Store for $2.99, Zephyr comes with two multitasking gestures. The first lets you swipe from the bottom of the screen to reveal an app switcher. The second lets you swipe from the left or right of the screen to quickly switch between recently used applications. Do these sound familiar? They should.

If you remember webOS, it had effectively the same gestures. Long swipes across the gesture area would switch apps and a big swipe from the gesture area to the touchscreen would show your app dock. The horizontal app-switching swipes also work on the BlackBerry PlayBook tablet. I’m not taking anything away from Chpwn (Grant Paul), per se. He had to get his inspiration from somewhere.  You’ll need to be jailbroken first.

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“I’d rather developers sell fewer than a million downloads and get to a million dollars,” said Brandon Watson, Microsoft’s director of developer experience for Windows Phone, at a press conference in Helsinki.

This isn’t the first time Microsoft has suggested this. Microsoft encouraged higher prices for apps back in 2009, for the Windows Mobile 6.5. The idea here is to encourage big developers frustrated with the App Store’s low price point to migrate over to the Windows Marketplace for Mobile instead. The App Store tends to prioritize the most popular and free apps, and many users will simply browse through those two categories to determine what to download. Developers who want to take advantage of the system simply price their apps at 99 cents, which increases the number of downloads and gives the app a longer shelf life.

Critics of the App Store’s system claim that the low price encourages mediocre apps instead of quality software, as higher-priced apps must sell a large amount to return the investment, which is difficult when an app’s low price tends to drive its popularity. Microsoft hopes to come out on top with the help of more than just a high-quality app store. In the first quarter of 2011, Microsoft’s Windows Phone 7 came last in smartphone sales with just 3.6 per cent of the market. The upcoming Mango updates, which will add some 500 new elements to the Windows Phone 7, will be released this fall.

Some of the new Mango features include Local Scout, which provides location awareness and allows users to find restaurants, attractions and activities nearby, multitasking that allows an easy switch between apps and games in use, and the ability to group contacts into personalized live tiles where the user can quickly send a text, email or IM to the whole group. Microsoft hopes their partnership with Nokia, and their new partnerships with Acer Inc., Fujitsu Ltd. and ZTE Corp., will further expand and strengthen the Windows Phone.

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In earlier versions of iOS, the “side switch” on the iPad allowed you to set the orientation lock to either landscape or portrait mode. This way, you didn’t accidentally get the display to keep flip-flopping between the two while reading the latest Harry Potter or Twilight book in your Kindle app. With iOS 4.2, the switch activated the mute function.

If you’re the kind of person who wants the orientation lock back, you could be in luck. The beta release of iOS 4.3 is showing that users can configure the iPad side switch to either lock the rotation or activate the mute function.

What’s interesting is that the seemingly simple touchscreen interface could soon be getting even more complicated with the introduction of several four- and five-finger gestures. You can pinch your way back to the home screen, swipe to the multitasking bar, and swipe to switch between active apps. The personal hotspot function seems to be making its way in there too.

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As you may recall, one of the biggest selling points of the Adam is that it makes use of the Pixel Qi “transflective” display. It also comes with a whole bunch of ports and inputs that you won’t find on the current iPad. The real kicker in this silent demo video is the multitasking performance.

Without exaggeration, the demo has the Notion Ink Adam running no fewer than nine apps all at the same time. This includes the “Sniffer” file browser app that has indexed the internal memory, USB drive, and SD card. It also includes a PDF file open in the Office Suite, the email client, and ebook reader. Over the course of the video they also open the weather app and a few new tabs in the browser.

All in all, it looks like Adam has no trouble keeping all the balls in the air, juggling a very impressive number of apps with swiping launches and quick switches. The UI isn’t silky smooth when things get a little more complex, but it looks like it’s able to hold its own. Good stuff. Now they just have to release the bloody thing and send us a unit to play with.

[Giz via Android Police, Notion Ink]

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Along with Fast app switching, Background audio is going, VoIP, Background location, Push notifications, Local notifications, Task completion are added to the list of multitasking features.

The second video below (in polish) shows the dashboard interface for Fast app switching.

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The major feature we have all been waiting for is multitasking, our iPhone 4G poll showed over 52% of iPhone owners would like multitasking, and Apple delivered. Improved Battery Life topped the charts at 61%, but with added multitasking this may only worsen performance.

1) Multitasking
Scott Forstall, Senior VP of iPhone software for Apple stated that multitasking would perform without incurring a performance hit.  The iPhone 4 will be fine tuned for different scenarios for developers.  One example shown was with Pandora’s Internet Radio streaming app, the app will play your music in the background all the while you are accessing other applications, you will even be able to control the playback when the screen is locked.

Example #2 was with Skype, allowing it to continue receiving calls while running in the background, great for other VoIP apps too.

Example #3 is for apps like TomTom or Loopt, constantly calculating your location from cellular sites, rather than using the GPS which will kill your battery in no time.

Example #4 is for push notifications.  A new “local notifications” service lets apps  bypass Apple’s servers when posting reminders or events.

Example #5 was a simple start and stop job, where a user can be using an app for say posting photos to Flickr, then changes to another app, but can return to the photo app and continue posting photos.  A no brainer but critical to many.
Example #6 is a “freezing” type of function, that lets your app freeze when you leave it, sort of like VMWare suspending another OS when your not using it.

2) Folders
A major innovation comes with Folders.  You will be able to create a folder with apps inside it, much nicer and cleaner for your iPhone desktop.  Simply drag apps on top of another folder, and it will reside inside it.  The folder will name itself by using a new feature Apple calls “intelligent naming.”  iPhone 4.0 will support 180 folders, 2160 apps, 12 apps per folder.

3) Improved Mail
You will be able to view all your mail accounts in one inbox, just like the Mail.app in OSX. iPhone Mail will also allow organization of messages by thread, open attachments with an app similar to the iPad’s ability to open Office or iWork attachments within Mail.  It’s not clear whether this feature can be set to multiple inboxes, but I don’t think Apple would intentionally make a mess of your mail.

4) iBooks for iPhone and iPod touch
Yes, not just for the iPad, iBooks is available for iPhones and iPods too.  Books and pages are synced wirelessly.  It comes with a free copy of Winnie the Pooh book, either to drive you crazy to quickly buy another iBook, or to put you to bed and forget all about it.

5) New Enterprise Features
Encrypted email and attachments are improved.  Enterprises need the toughest security, and an API will let developers encrypt data with their apps.   Support for multiple Exchange accounts, Exchange Server 2010, SSL VPN and wireless app distribution for updating multiple devices will be supported.

6) Game Center
Game Center will have over 50,000 gaming titles from the App Store.  Social gaming networks will be created, allowing users to invite friends, setup matches for multiplayer mayhem, stats and leaderboards, and tracking in-game achievements.

7) iAd
Apple intends to take the mobile advertising world by storm.  With millions iPhones and iPods out there, how can they not get involved?  A new 60/40 rev share for developers and Apple will allow them to implement more interactive ads within apps.  Previously ads in apps would launch the browser and take you away from what you were doing, so no one clicked on them.  Now they will be fun and exciting, taking you on a marketing journey through HTML5 innovations.
One such ad demonstrated by Apple was for Toy Story 3.  Created in HTML5, the fancy ad allows the user to view characters, videos, posters and downloads, play sound clips, and of course return to the app you were using previously.
Air Jordan shoes also had an interactive app, it allows users to build custom shoes, view the history of a product, and find a nearby store.  For some reason you can also build a custom dorm room but I think they were just showing off.

Here is a list of other “minor” features to enhance iPhone 4.0:

• File & delete Mail search results
• Search SMS/MMS messages
• Web search suggestions
• Choose image size in Mail messages
• Bluetooth keyboards
• CalDav invitations
• Larger fonts for Mail, SMS & alerts
• Cell data only setting
• Spell check
• Persistent Wi-Fi
• Gift Apps
• Birthday calendar
• Recent Web searches
• Create Playlists
• Top Hit in search
• 5x digital zoom
• Nested Playlists
• CardDav
• Tap to focus video
• Upload workouts to Nike+
• Places in Photos
• iPod Out
• Home screen wallpaper
• Search SMS/MMS messages
• Wake on wireless

Expect iPhone 4.0 to be out for iPhone and iPod touch users this summer, iPad users will have to wait until the fall.

The post iPhone 4.0 is official: Apple brings you multitasking and more appeared first on Mobile Magazine.

Most "smartphones" are unable to multitask fully as users would expect.

Rivals Microsoft and Apple have two mobile device platforms with one similar thing in common: both are unable to fully multitask.

For example, the biggest criticism being aimed at the iPhone is simply the inability to write an e-mail and listen to music in the background. You have to turn off the Pandora application for that. The only other way around this problem is hacking into the phone, commonly referred to as jail breaking. This is illegal according to Apple.

For Windows Phone 7, the operating systems’ core components can run without any slowdown. Again just like the iPhone, the third party applications can’t run in the background. Coincidence? Or smart phone technology just not being so smart yet.

If the lack of multitasking isn’t annoying enough, Windows 7 does not support the copy and paste function, as the iPhone did not when it first was released. How is anyone going to get used to not being able to copy and paste?

This is surprisingly quite the opposite in the case of Google Android which allows multitasking, so running third party applications is a very smooth process. Although there is a limitation to how many applications you can load into the internal memory in order to maintain a “smooth” operating environment.

Microsoft’s Charlie Kindel has said “We do not allow third-party applications running on the phone to execute in the background” his reason being: the drain on the phone’s battery life. It is a widely held belief that multitasking is a term that is misinterpreted in the world of smartphones because on paper both the iPhone and Windows Phone 7 have their core components running in the background. This misinterpretation might stem from the fact that multitasking for a desktop is much different than a smartphone.

Palm’s Web Operating is another shining example of a phone’s operating system that allows you to run applications in the background, but this has a large impact on the device’s battery life.

Comparing Apple and Microsoft’s phones to Googles and Palm’s is  like comparing a marathon runner to a sprinter. Who has the stamina to run the longest distance? When it’s all said and done, Microsoft seems to be taking a step back and trying to emulate the iPhone. This is an unusual move for the company but hasn’t stopped them from copying before.

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