Multitasking on Windows Phone

Multitasking on Windows Phone is confusing. When you are in an app, you can hold down the back button on the phone and you will be presented with an array of several cards. For some of you have have used WebOS, this may look a little familiar. The cards that are presented to you at this screen are all of the apps that you previously had open. It doesn't matter how you exited out of them; whether you simply clicked the home button, locked your device, or whatever. These apps are in a 'frozen' state. They aren't actually running, but they are saved in the memory and will usually resume quite quickly if you click on them.

Most apps that are running in the background on Windows Phone aren't actually running, except for a few exceptions that Microsoft has made. Music apps such as Pandora, Slacker Radio, Spotify, and more will actually play your music in the background, as opposed to how other apps will behave in the background. Let's say you have a game, but then you exit out of it and go to the home screen. If you hold the back button and go back to the game, it will resume right where you left off, as if it were paused. This means that the application wasn't actually running in the background, it was just 'sleeping'.

Another confusing thing about multitasking with Windows Phone is that you can't actually control which apps you want to keep running; it will always be the most recent ones. If you want to keep a game open but you go to ten other apps, your game will most likely no longer be running. This makes it very difficult to control which apps you actually run in the background.

Windows Phone gives you the appearance of multitasking without actually giving you multitasking, which may be a good or a bad thing. One one side of the issue, this method of multitasking is the thing that makes Windows Phone so smooth. My HTC HD7 never freezes up or lags, and this may be the reason why. On the other hand, not having true multitasking can be a downer in some situations.

To understand multitasking on Windows Phone, you really have to experience it for yourself. It works, but it isn't what you would expect. Also, multitasking is only available on Windows Phone 7.5 (Mango) and above.