The Google Phone
avc.com
avc.com
And the HN Discussion: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1032213
http://www.techcrunch.com/2010/01/05/google-nexus-one-the-te...
...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.
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.
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.
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.
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).
Beejive also recently integrated with Address Book - so you can connect your buddies with their address cards.
Just thought you might not be aware. It's no blackberry, but it isn't half bad.
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.
It also has stats on which applications have used the battery (and how much) since you last recharged.
Some little popup that says "Would you like to allow this application to run in the background? This can severely affect battery life and performance"
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.
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).
Really, I'd love to see the big surprise be a data-only plan option.
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.
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.