Windows Phone Thoughts: The Windows Phone 7 Multitasking Story

"What's my take on this? Well, Windows Phone 7 is based on Windows Embedded CE. Without going into too much details on Windows CE, it is basically a real-time operating system and is not a trimmed down version of their desktop Windows OS. Windows CE is it's own full fledged real-time operating system and yes it can do multitasking. In all the years I've been developing Windows Phone and Windows CE software for customers, I have seen lots of applications that just go out and kill the battery, launch X number of threads or do things that are just not too smart and really kills the end user experience on the device. Think about it, when an app kills the battery in 1hr, the end user will usually say "this phone sucks" and returns it. In reality it's not the phones fault, it's the crappy app! This has always been a problem that has plagued Pocket PC/Windows Mobile/Windows Phone 5.x - 6.x for some time. Windows Phone 7 is about the end user and making sure their experience with the phone is top notch. This post on Windows Phone 7 and "Focus" by Charlie Kindel talks a bit more about the end user experience."

If you're wondering where Windows Phone 7 stands on multitasking, especially in the wake of Apple's iPhone 4.0 OS, check out this blog post by Mark Arteaga!