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Windows Phone 7 To Get Multi-Tasking, IE9, Xbox Integration
geek4 writes "Microsoft is planning to introduce multi-tasking and full integration with Internet Explorer 9 in future updates to its Windows Phone 7 mobile operating system later this year. IE9 on Windows Phone 7 will use the same core browsing engine as on PCs. Microsoft also talked about the importance of multi-tasking, and claims it can now offer fast task switching without causing serious detriment to the battery life. In particular, Microsoft said, this will improve the experience of using third party applications. In a demo, a Microsoft engineer showed how a music application called 'Slacker' could keep music playing in the background while the user moved between different applications. By holding down the 'back' button, users can also see all their recently accessed applications, allowing them to switch easily between them."
Microsoft also demonstrated how they're integrating WP7 with Xbox 360 consoles, showing a video of players using their phones as an auxiliary touchscreen controller to interact with a Kinect game.
Microsoft is planning to introduce multi-tasking and full integration with Internet Explorer 9
Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer went on to explain that this would involve installing easily exploited libraries and components of IE9 into WP7 kernel space with full read/write access to all other WP7 kernel modules so it could run faster than competing browsers on the devices. He then bragged that it would be extremely trivial for such a compromised phone to broadcast and infect all XBox 360's within range. Where botnets had once been constrained to the family PC, Ballmer boasted a larger market for penetration and manipulation sitting next to televisions in 50 million homes and nearly everyone's pockets. Ballmer explained that this new strategy was actually a throwback to the days of IE6 and he suspected that this move would make IE9 as pervasive as IE6 once was. Sony and Nintendo were unavailable for comment but it's clear Microsoft has once again won the hearts -- and minds -- of the world's malware authors.
My work here is dung.
Does not save Nokia....
The 90s called, asking for its unique selling point back.
Roles are switched: MS is re-implementing experience that users are already accustomed to on Linux (Android). And expecting 3rd party developers to switch or at least "also support" their platform for 1% of users.
839*929
Fixed that for you.
"The same thing we do every day, Pinky. Try to take over the world."
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
Once me and my frat bros are done with this kegger, we're totally giving you a swirlie, dweeb. Halo RULES. *BROFIST*
i'll just say... WTF? They think multitasking is new and innovative ? Maybe a decade ago .
We are so fucked.
Is amazing how much hardware get cursed with that crap.
Please no, in the name of all webmasters worlwide, no.
-Woof woof woof!
Am I the only one that's really surprised that multitasking wasn't already a feature? I thought it was weird when they announced it for the iPhone 4 like it was some huge breakthrough. Symbian might be a piece of crap as a smartphone OS, but, damn, they've had multitasking for 10 years now. It's not a hardware issue. How did this get ignored for so long in iOS and Windows phone?
This sentence no verb.
This "multi-tasking" thing (did I say that right?) sounds freaking amazing!
I can't beleive they've also got a web browser running on a phone (on a PHONE!!!!). I almost crapped my pants!!!
God bless the USA!
Halo is no better than the thousands of other Bloody simulators. I'd sooner play fun games like Metroid, Zelda, Mario, Final Fantasy, Dance Revolution, and so on.
Information wants to be expensive AND wants to be free. So you have Value vs. Cheap distribution fighting each other.
I'm totally pumped for these new additions. It's true, they've been playing catch-up with WP7, but it's an incredible platform and the velocity of feature additions is quite impressive. I've developed for all three major platforms and I have to say, Silverlight with c# is a pretty amazing developer story. The UI is arguably the most attractive and innovative, the XBox and Office integration is unparalleled and the hardware holds its own. I sure would love to see some 4G support, though.
The last 2 Final fantasies were bloody simulators. 13 and 14 both had terrible gameplay involving Sony butchering their fanbase.
I hope Nokia is in position to demand at least some necessary functionality from their new OS..
Then both people using it will really be impressed.
Am I reading this right? Windows phones will now be able to do things android and iphones have been doing for years?
I find being offended by me offensive.
Don't make it sound like a press release, it's cringe inducing.
Square-enix. Not sony.
Facepalm for stupid typos. I had the phrase "sony fanboy" in my mind from reading the GGP.
Oh no, it gets quite better than that... They're re-implementing features that their previous mobile OS - Windows Mobile - had before Android or iOS even existed.
This is good.
Before you reach out for the pitchforks and torches, let me finish the sentence: this is good for competition. Now that Nokia will ship WP7, Apple and Google will find themselves with a worthy competitor in the smartphone market. At least when it comes to user experience.
The most absurd part is that the stuff he's excited about makes no sense. Did he use a Dilbert press release generator?
NO other games have ENERGY swords or anything. BROLLCALL!
http://www.vgcats.com/comics/?strip_id=285
Interesting.
really i love Microsoft.
english courses
Yes, Nokia sells a LOT of phones. Dirt cheap dumb phones in poor countries. They probably make so much money at it that they aren't at all in trouble. Oh wait they are.
The big money is in the smart phones and there Nokia has lost out.
Same as WM7 has been loosing out. Both have tried competing in this market and Android, iPhone and Rim have left them in the dust.
So now they are going to combine their epic powers of fail for what?
The idea that Android has to look out for Windows Phone is the same idea as MS fanboys had with every previous iteration of MS CE/Mobile and got knows what other names they have used to hide the fact of old vinegar in crappy bags.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Windows Phone 7 was lacking a lot of functionality the earlier Windows Mobile had. It's just a new not-yet-complete OS.
This makes me wonder if they're using a more agile-style approach and releasing what functionality they have completely tested instead of releasing the complete functionality regardless of what they've had time to test? It does make sense in a phone OS.
Metro is such a clean, fast interface, lets me see just what I want to see exactly when I want to see it. There's very little hunting/searching for something, as if I use it more than once per day I just pin it to the front page. It just fits extremely well how I want to use a phone.
Although I do have to say, if I couldn't have test-driven it on an HD2 I probably wouldn't have taken the leap to full fledged WP7 hardware. Kudos to MS for not legalbomb XDA from orbit when DFT released the ROM into the wild. If they continue to be smart, they'll let the mod community flourish they way they did with WM6 - that's the only thing that made the platform stay as relevant as it did, for as long as it did.
"I'd make a wooshing sound, but the post was so far over your head it was inaudible..."
You should give it a try.
It's much nicer than you would imagine.
I don't have one.. but I've played with a friend of mines.. and I would have no problem switching over to WP7 from my android or certainly my blackberry.
Right, because everyone hasn't been playing MeToo against iOS for the last 4 years.
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
"By holding down the 'back' button, " The pre can navigate through as well as close apps via gestures, its really quite smooth(for most of you that have not used a pre). Jason
Yay! Focus stealing on my phone too! Like we haven't been tortured enough by that on the desktop.
It was a play on Meego you insensitive clod!
Wow check out the total blind hatred!
I didn't read any hatred - just a history of the Windows security vulnerabilities and how they came to be.
It's a warning that we don't want to trod that path again. That's not hatred, it's good advice.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
...Microsoft just patented multitasking.
WP7 will not sell heavily until MS can break blackberry's hold on the enterprise market
They wanted to take on the iPhone, when they should have taken on the Blackberry. Plenty of IT managers would love to have an all MS shop with a phone that worked flawlessly within their systems. Instead, Microsoft targeted the consumer market (and added features that would actually alienate IT managers), forgetting that Microsoft has a severely damaged consumer brand. People run Ms software 'cos they have to, not 'cos they want to. In most consumers' minds, Microsoft is synonymous with bloated, unfinished, barely working, buggy software. They aren't eager to relive their PC misery with their phones if they have other choices, which is why the iPhone does so well. Apple has a great consumer brand and the iPhone (unlike the mac) is subsidized enough that the average user can afford it.
I don't want agile development anywhere, but last of all in my phone or car.
In a phone, primarily I want a phone, with good 4+ days battery life, my N 3100 does that,
fits in my car and mutes the entertainment system when using your phone so hands free
is reasonably safe.
I need to re-boot, ie power off, my N95 once a week because Symbian goes dollaly.
Whe Bosch, who make the BMW and Mercedes engine/gearbox controllers, they started
the same crap, UNTIL Bosch reverted. I do not need a car that gets BSOD.
A NewZeeland friend with a new 535i that did this had a relay system fitted that took Vcc off the
ECR/TCS and put a 10 ohm 50 watt resistor across the Vcc input pins to discharge the
internal capacitors. Pushing the button once a week made his car work, not leave him by
the roadside once ever 3 months.
I say again M$ quality!
That video is pretty damn cool.
The price is always right if someone else is paying.
If you're counting previous versions of Windows Mobile... they could multitask before Apple even put out the iPhone.
Right, but now they can't.
So what the hell is your point?
That one company is advancing.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
It seems like something I've heard before from Redmond.
Come again? Multi tasking? Is this 1965 or something??
Hey! I thought it was supposed to be hot enough to set your rig on fire!
That's not a clod, it's an iRoadApple.
Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon
I for one think that Microsoft has done a great job thus far with wp7. Cut them some slack. Aside from lack of multitasking it's a pretty slick interface and it looks like they're on top of that. I have the Dell Venue Pro from T-Mobile and it's by far the best smartphone I've owned. They're coming along, and in my opinion faster than their predecessors. You girls won't be satisfied until someone creates a phone that'll whip you up a cup of coffee and iron your shirts for you right out of the box. PS No I don't work for Microsoft.
If applications ping a server regularly to see if they have updates or if there is a message, that uses a lot more of both resources than if it subscribes to a network service that notifies the device when the same event occurs.
Subscription to network notifications are more efficient for the local CPU, but then you have to keep the phone's radio powered up to maintain the connection and stay open for notifications. If polling frequency is low, you can probably save a lot more juice by only powering up the radio briefly, every hour.
And of course, multitasking complicates this too. It's a fixed power cost to keep the radio going for any number of potential notifications, whereas multiple apps polling, even occasionally, multiplies the power drain. System management of the radio can clearly help (by possibly e.g. only allowing it on for brief windows to allow both polling and subscribing background apps to connect - foreground apps would of course get unrestricted access).
There's a balance between unrestricted multitasking & potential battery drain, and as Google said, optimising this is Hard. But the user can be involved too - I rather like Android's approach of showing you exactly what is causing the unexpected battery drain you're seeing. This has saved my bacon by pinpointing badly-written apps and settings I accidentally left on, more than once.
Why would anyone engrave "Elbereth"?
Ah yes, these users were no doubt just as thankful for Mr Jobs saving their original iPhone's battery life by denying them a 3G connection. Perhaps they would be even more thankful if the phone restricted its CPU to half speed, and locked the screen brightness at minimum? Think of the enormous battery savings there.
I'm just thankful that there also exist phones that not only do simple app switching, but allow the *user* decide if they wish to expend a little extra power on a useful background task (and that let the user easily spot and uninstall any badly-written apps that might abuse this). Choice always trumps no choice, at least in my books.
Why would anyone engrave "Elbereth"?
Surely you haven't forgotten the exploit that enabled iphone OS to be jailbroken from the web browser?
That used two separate exploits, one in the PDF handler and the other in the OS itself.
Neither were Safari.
With IE in Windows many exploits got to go directly to happy play time because the browser was integrated in the OS.
It's pretty hilarious to see you guys trot out a once in a lifetime meeting of two exploits, when there were years with daily IE exploits and even now you can't run a PC without a virus checker running constantly. Oh sure, it's EXACTLY THE SAME.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I fail to see how this is informative. My droid phone multitasks to one's heart delight without even thinking about it. And even IOS doesn't allow full multitasking all the time. The downside with the multitasking in android is reduced battery life at times. However, it is a tradeoff I am willing to make. I can switch between apps at will and no problem. :)
I am sure WP7 is pretty good. Still, I will stick with android for now. :) Multitasking is nothing new. These are the not the droids you are looking for. Move along. Move along.
"Microsoft is planning to..." here we go again... What irks me the most is that the rest of the world *still* hasn't figured out That "Microsoft is planning..." almost always mean that either:
1. MS won't introduce it at all but are instead using the announcement to disturb competitors.
2. MS will introduce a half hearted attempt at the feature that looks like it works if you do it in a non documented way without installing any third party apps, etc.
Yes, yes... they do deliver once in a while but by relying on such announcements we are effectively stalling progress.
Now, is everyone else stupid or am I just being rude? Still haven't figured it out yet...