Apple iOS 4 vs. Android Multitasking: Which Approach Is Better for Users?

The apps that will run in the background are typically those that have actions that must be performed in the background, such as navigation, music streaming, or VoIP (but surprisingly, not instant messaging apps); for example, your GPS app could continue to track your progress and give you directions regardless of whether you're on the phone, listening to audio, or performing some other task.

Apple says that iOS 4 keeps track of which apps have been used more recently than others, and which ones take up more memory than others. Apps will be purged from the suspended state if the phone runs out of memory. Apple won't say how much memory is involved, but spokespeople have confirmed that the memory is dedicated system memory, and has nothing to do with the available storage space on the device.

However, even if more Android phones were to include a preinstalled app manager, I'd posit that the very need for a separate app is a failure of the Android operating system. For something as basic as identifying which apps are open--and closing any of those apps--users should not have to figure the process out independently of the phone's core environment.

That said, Apple's approach has its weaknesses. Foremost among them is the fact that app developers must first update their apps to support iOS 4 and multitasking (or fast app switching, as some app developers are calling the suspension feature). That means that not all apps will support the feature during these early days of the new operating system, even though iOS 4 will hold all apps in "suspended" space. And even though iOS 4 is trying to manage those apps, it isn't doing so precisely: On an iPhone 3GS running iOS 4, I've encountered a game app, Annie's Wildshot from Temco, that delivered a message saying that it detected low memory. (The game is not iOS 4-tested, whatever that may or may not mean here.) This message--which I had never seen before--appeared when I had 28 apps showing in the multitasking bar. Clearly, even if users can't see the impact, suspended and multitasking apps are utilizing the phone's resources.