Yes, that's a red herring.

But there is indeed a real problem with the "real" multitasking that android implements: Responsiveness. This is one area that they absolutely need to work on urgently.

On the iPhone everything is near instant, or if you have to wait then there is clear indication that the phone is doing something.

On Android we get the familiar (but unwelcome) choppyness that we know from Desktop Operating Systems. Button presses will not always be recognized immediately (or sometimes not at all). Page transitions are not always smooth, often they are choppy or do outright freeze in the middle. It is very often not obvious that you have to wait; i.e. a button press will cause the UI to freeze momentarily but without giving you any feedback that your press was actually registered.

And ofcourse the unpredictable delays when opening or switching apps. A multi-second delay before opening the phonebook or dialer is simply unacceptable for a phone.

This description actually makes it sound worse than it is. Despite these problems I'm quite happy with my Samsung Galaxy overall. But they need to work on this stuff if they want the perception of android as "slow" and "choppy" to change. Because that's the first thing you notice when playing around with an android device in the store.