Is it true that the iPhone can't run simultaneous apps?

[computerboyo]

When I heard this I was all LOL.

But I just wanted to check, e.g. on my Hero I can run GPS Tracker and press home and it will run in the background, play some music and press home and it will run in the background and go and do something else.

Are you saying the iPhone would have to completely exit the GPS Tracker to use another app or leave the GPS Tracker open and not do anything else for it to work???

 

[phillevy]

When I heard this I was all LOL.

But I just wanted to check, e.g. on my Hero I can run GPS Tracker and press home and it will run in the background, play some music and press home and it will run in the background and go and do something else.

Are you saying the iPhone would have to completely exit the GPS Tracker to use another app or leave the GPS Tracker open and not do anything else for it to work???

As far as I'm aware the iPhone can't multi-task but the iPod (music) is an exception to this and can be left running.

 

[aznsmith]

the ability to multitask apps can either be a good or bad thing. it's a convenient and time saving feature but it also uses a lot of system resources that will slow the phone down considerably over time if the user can't easily control the number of processes. I currently have the htc hero but i wish android managed apps like in webos because i tend to get low an ram and have to either use settings or a 3rd party app to kill some processes. i wish the hero came with at least 512mb of ram and a cortex a8 cpu...i would have paid more to have the extra speed and resources.

 

[G8D]

iDevices can only run Mail, iPod and Safari apps in the background.

If you hack them you can unlock the background potential and then background any app, but with little to no memory management it soon becomes very cumbersome.

Hero seems to manage quite well with it tho.

 

[CitizenErazed]

The problem is there's some apps, such as Spotify and Satnav, that really lose their usefulness if you can't multitask them. I like to listen to Spotify and play a game on my phone at the same time - couldn't do that if I had an iPhone.