"I could have done all of that on the iPhone except the part about running multiple apps the same time. Which is a big deal by the way."
...other than being able to play last.fm in the background there isn't anything about this that requires background third-party apps (seems like everyone ignores the fact that Apple's apps can run in the background).
So I'm not sure why this is "a big deal by the way", other than maybe because the google phone comes with only 4GB of storage so you can't take a lot of your own music with you.
If the iPhone added an alarm/scheduled notification API and location trigger API, and functionality to start an app up automatically w/ user permission and then quit itself and restart the previous open application. This would replace most apps that need backgrounding for various tasks. Apps like locale, sweet dreams, im apps and calendaring apps could all be implemented with this kind of functionality (some of them not as well with android), yet avoid backgrounding applications.
I think this would be much less of a 'big deal' if you could 'suspend' more apps. Getting a txt during a game leaving the game to reply to it and then coming back and not being able to pick up where you left of does suck. If it could effectively sleep the app and pick it up again properly this would essentially remove any need for background apps for me. I do know Tweetie 2 has implemented this and it rocks.
The developer of whichever game you are referring to hasn't written the application properly: it should offer to resume state when the application is next launched.
The Apple model, one app at a time, makes a lot of sense, particularly in this use case: on a device with a four inch screen, there's no need to have a game, or most other applications, running in the background!
1) I am on IRC on my mobile device and my coworker says there's a problem with something on server-x
2) With IRC in the background I open an SSH client to login to server-x and check on the issue. Seeing a service is down I switch back to IRC.
3) I tell my coworker on IRC the service appears to be down down.
4) I bring up a browser window to verify that the web server on server-x is not responding.
... etc
This type of workflow will not work on single tasking mobile devices, and it's not an unreasonable use case at all.
That type of workflow will not work on today's multitasking devices for very long; the battery will die pretty quickly. I can testify to this having done it on the G1.
For the meantime (next year or two), until batteries get better and hardware more efficient, push notifications are a pretty good way to solve this. Why does the handset need to keep these connections open when a remote server can do this more efficiently, not draining the battery, and then push a notification when an event happens?
There is a fundamental limit to the amount of information that can be conveyed on a 4" screen. Everything else "running" in the background, in a single tasking environment, can be taken care of by well written apps and services. More of a pain for the developer, yes, but a godsend for one's battery and CPU time.
It's indeed mostly a burden on the iPhone devs side to support good 'suspension' behavior, and there are some frameworks (like Three20) which more or less offer it 'out of the box'.
I used an Android phone for a while before switching to the iPhone and in most of the cases where I missed running multiple apps only _one_ background app would be enough (e.g., Last.fm and other music (streaming) apps, a GPS tracker, some games).
As you mentioned some apps do this, the necessary tools are there (apps are notified when they are about to be closed and allowed to save data, suspend state, etc.) to allow apps to suspend gracefully however it's up to the developer to use them and that is pretty hit-or-miss.
IM is another good reason to have background apps. I'm still amazed that Apple hasn't bundled IM into the iPhone. The third party apps suck as they require the push notifications.
You have to pay for them, you count on third party servers staying up, screen names aren't managed in the phone's central address book, messages get separated out into different areas, etc. On my Mac Mail already knows if who I'm emailing is on IM--that's the kind of functionality that I expect on the phone.
Good to hear about Address Book integration. It still feels awkward to me though, the way the Pre does it seems to be what I'm looking for. I want be able to start an IM or an SMS from a contact in the Address Book (or right in Messages) and see both in the same place. I don't want to go back and have to remember if it was an IM or SMS when I want to re-visit a conversation. They're all messages.
I'm actually very glad it doesn't support background apps. The biggest problem I had with the Windows Mobile smartphone I had before the iPhone was with the background apps. The phone was already underpowered, which was a problem.
When Apps were launched, they would automatically run in the background if you switched contexts, further starving the phone of resources. It was also difficult to tell what was running. This would inevitably cause the phone to run out of memory, and either perform so slowly that you would miss calls, or lockup and reboot whenever new calls came in.
If I decide I really need a keyboard (I think I do), I'm pretty confident that some handset manufacturer will build the ideal hardware configuration for me soon.
It's called the Verizon Droid and it's quite a nice phone. The high pixel density screen is the envy of iphone users everywhere.
I played with one for a few hours and didn't find it any better than an OSK. I was a longtime Sidekick user though, so I have a high bar for keyboard quality.
I suspect that these reviews are a little premature and that Google has a few tricks up their sleeve for today's Nexus One event. Google distributed this phone to thousands of people weeks before its launch, including some non-employees, knowing full well that it would leak.
That's a great way to build up buzz, but at the same time it makes for a pretty lame event. My guess is we'll see a few new apps or features that weren't baked into the employee phones (yet).
I've never really paid any attention to Google press releases; have they traditionally been any good at having surprises at them?
Apple is the standard bearer for message control, I don't know that Google is any good at stopping internal leaks - it seems like we know a ton more about the Nexus One than almost any Apple product announcement already.
The Nexus One leaks are deliberate. No, Google may not have actually sent the photos to blogs themselves, but giving the device to that many people just before the holidays? It was basically guaranteed. They knew it would happen.
As far as Google's leak control, I think that they can be secretive when they want to be. Part of that comes from the fact that they have so much going on — you hear a rumor and it could well be related to some random research project or internal test, etc. But I've been to a few Google events where there were product launches that hadn't been previously rumored.
A good example is probably the Chrome launch. As far as I can remember, there wasn't any significant buildup in rumors of a "Google Browser" in the weeks before that announcement. Granted, the cat came out of the bag when a mailing company accidentally shipped the Chrome comics a day early, but that didn't come from an employee leak.
I'm counting on it as well. It would be silly to engineer all this pre-hype and then just announce another phone with the only big feature being the Eclair (or Flan?) update.
Really, I'd love to see the big surprise be a data-only plan option.
That it is not a formal review is exactly the point. People think too much when they write reviews. Quick thoughts are more interesting to me, because quick thoughts dominate most people's purchase decisions.
And the HN Discussion: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1032213