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Free Skype Client Lands On the iPhone
CNet is reporting that a free Skype client will finally be landing on the iPhone this week. Unfortunately some are saying that it seems many of the "critical" pieces of functionality are still missing. While the Skype engineers claim their native client will offer better audio quality (because there is no need to route through another server and transcode audio) they are still missing text messaging, file transfers, and integrated voice mail. Since the iPhone does not allow for multiple programs running concurrently, many are expecting existing multi-function apps like Fring and NimBuzz to continue their reign at the top.
It's an arbitrary restriction and only applies to third-party apps. The aim is to avoid third-party apps draining the battery by doing a lot of things in the background, or preventing other things from working by using all of the RAM (the iPhone doesn't enable swapping, I believe).
In theory, this is a good idea. Unfortunately, the whole philosophy of the iPhone is that Apple knows better than the owner of the device (which is probably true in the case of a lot of the users...) so there is no way of overriding this.
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Skype will only use the WiFi network, not the 'unlimited' ATT data plan so you will only be able to use it while tethered to a local hotspot, not out roaming in the wild. ATT and Apple protect their revenue and force you to use your paid minutes instead of the 'unlimited' data plan that you are paying big bucks for...
I don't read your sig. Why are you reading mine?
iPhones can run multiple apps, but the public SDK does not allow developers to write apps that run in the background. Apple can certainly write apps that run in the background, though. The music service, for one. The phone service, etc. Additionally, developers for jailbroken phones can run applications in the background because they're not constrained by the official SDK.
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(the iPhone doesn't enable swapping, I believe).
That is correct. The iPhone's virtual memory model does not include swapping.
ZuluPad, the wiki notepad on crack
The earpieces that come with the iphone (or suitable replacement) and its inline microphone work with the touch.
from 09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
to 45 2F 6E 40 3C DF 10 71 4E 41 DF AA 25 7D 31 3F
I'll post a link, there's nothing illegal about it:
http://blog.iphone-dev.org/
For lack of a better signature...
I'm not sure it's the background apps that are the problem so much as what 99% of background apps do while in the background. The main reason to run an application in the background is to do networking, and that means the radio has to move from GPRS mode into EDGE or 3G mode, which drains significantly more power. It's not at all surprising that it causes a much higher battery drain if background apps keep waking the cellular hardware while it should be idle.
As soon as you bring up the cellular network to get data, you're spending several seconds negotiating with the tower to switch from GPRS mode to EDGE or 3G and obtain an IP number for the interface. Then, your initial DNS lookup, at least based on my experience with AT&T's EDGE network can potentially add another 10-15 seconds in the worst case. Pull even a trivial amount of data and you've probably added another ten or fifteen seconds. At that point, you've spent the better part of a minute with the radio draining significantly more power than it does in its normal GPRS/waiting-for-calls standby state. Do this once a minute, and you almost might as well be talking on the phone to somebody. Okay, so maybe that's a bit of an exaggeration, but it does drain a lot more power....
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Having read the iPhone Memory Management guide a number of times, I can assure you that that the iPhone's virtual memory model does not include disk swapping. The Apple documentation says exactly this.
ZuluPad, the wiki notepad on crack