Windows Phone full multitasking UI demonstration [video]

By Tom Warren, on 15th Feb 11 9:03 pm with 11 Comments

Microsoft is planning to add full multitasking to Windows Phone in a point release later this year.

The software giant demonstrated this functionality with an early build of “Mango”, a release that Microsoft plans to ship in the second half of 2011. Mango provides multitasking, Internet Explorer 9, SkyDrive integration and Twitter people hub support. Joe Belfiore, who oversees Windows Phone Program Management, and is responsible for the design and software product definition of forthcoming generations of Windows phones, demonstrated all of Mango’s features during Steve Ballmer’s Mobile World Congress keynote earlier this week.

Belfiore demonstrated the new multitasking functions of Windows Phone which will allow users to quickly switch between applications, resume apps and use a new UI to check the state and switch to running apps. The UI is similar to Microsoft’s Windows 7 peek function as it gives an overview of the application state before the switch occurs. Microsoft’s multitasking for Windows Phone addresses a key criticism of the new operating system and is scheduled to ship as part of a big release possibly named Windows Phone 7.5.

  • GP007

    God time can’t move fast enough when you want it to, how many updates before Mango though? Because there was talk that Mango wasn’t the first “major” update for this year. Does that mean we’ll get a 7.1 and or a 7.2 before we see the big Mango update for 7.5?

    Damnit MiX is so far away now.

    • http://www.winrumors.com Tom W

      Mango is the first major update. I believe there could be a further update after NoDo. As far as I know Mango will be 7.5

  • Anonymous

    What if you were to click on a tile for the game?

  • http://www.twitter.com/astroXP astroX

    Hope they add a close button on top right corner for each tile

  • Manish

    Why always in the end of this year? Why not hurry, for the company of MS size, taking so much time is realy disappointing.

  • Nicholas

    Is it just me, is is this not REAL multitasking! TO me, this looks like just very fast task switching!!! If this was real multitasking, the programmes would continue to run in the background.

    • Anonymous

      I think at some point they show’d off how a third party music player could run in the background and be controlled by that drop down menu that currents only handles zune.

    • http://about.me/abhinavk Abhinav Kumar

      So you want your game to be played (by no one) in the background.

  • http://www.iwebsnacks.com Karan Mehta

    I am not sure how windows phone is doing in the market these days? Heard a lot about Android and iOS but somehow, not many cell phone models carry windows mobile 7 as of now…How are the reviews and what would be the new phones which are in the news with Windows 7?

    Karan Mehta

  • http://twitter.com/Magaret9999 Magaret

    Maybe you need a phone jammer to solve the cell phone issue.

  • Ricosabel

    hmzz, looks nice. Kinda looks like they looked very closely to what Palm did in WebOS. I guess they figure, if RIM can have it, we’ll take it too!