No multi-tasking in Windows Phone 7 Series

 

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Posted on 16 Mar 2010 at 13:06

Microsoft has announced that its upcoming Windows Phone 7 Series operating system will not support multi-tasking in third-party apps, which could put a cloud over the OS's impressive first outing at Mobile World Congress.

In addition to that, apps can only be installed via Microsoft's Windows Phone Marketplace and there's no longer support for user-replaceable memory cards. There's an air of familiarity to this, as the iPhone has the same limitations imposed on it.

The news came from Charlie Kindel, head of Microsoft's Windows Phone developer strategy, who described the software giant's bid for more control. Kindel said this was required to provide a "great set of consumer experiences." Taking that statement for what it is, it's quite clear that Windows Phone 7 Series is targeted at consumers and not businesses for the time being.

The lack of multi-tasking isn't quite as limited as the iPhone's, though. For instance, a music application would be allowed to play in the background using a special background music service - you're unlikely to get the same joy out of a VoIP app, as there won't be a service to allow third-party apps to access telephony in the background.

Microsoft said it isn't against background processing, but it's still trying to find a way to do it that doesn't drain battery life or sacrifice system responsiveness. "Apps that run arbitrarily in the background create an end user experience where battery life and responsiveness of the system becomes inconsistent," explained Kindel. "We focused on getting a set of experiences right where we didn't have to support [multitasking] but we will over time."

Kindel also said that there won't be a way for enterprises to deploy apps to their staff's handsets and they'll have to be manually installed via the Windows Phone Marketplace like all other apps. Microsoft is working on a way around this, but we think it's going to be some time before we see anything concrete.

"We are revamping a lot of the marketplace policies and we have a real desire to make sure that for developers, getting started is cheap and easy," Kindel said, hinting that it could be cheaper to develop for than the iPhone for example.

Finally, user-replaceable memory cards are out and Microsoft said that it would work with OEMs to make sure that there's "enough" storage for media and games. Kindel said that some phones may have a microSD card, but it will be locked under the battery and won't be user-replaceable.

Author: Tim Smalley