iPhone OS 4.0 To Have Multitasking VOIP

08. Apr, 2010 1 Comment

Steve Jobs just jailbroke the iPhone.

It only took a few years, but it’s finally here: Multitasking for the iPhone.

The single biggest drawback keeping the iPhone and iPod touch squarely out of the VOIP game was the lack of multitasking, and this summer, it will be coming.

Today, Apple announced OS 4.0 for the iPhone, to be released in the summer with a developer preview available now. Steve Jobs announced over 1500 new APIs and a list of features for the new OS version, with the biggest announcement being the ability to run apps in the background.

The app-switching interface looks well thought out (would you expect anything less?), with a double click of the home button bringing up a list of all the currently running apps, sort of like an alt-tab bar. Switching between apps is just a matter of touching the icon on this task bar.

This is a game-changer for VOIP apps such as Skype.

Originally, in order for you to receive a call through your Skype app on your iPhone, the Skype app had to be actively running – you had to have Skype up and on the screen all the time. This made Skype useful for calling out, but essentially useless for receiving calls.

This was somewhat addressed with the introduction of push notifications in OS 3.0. These notifications allowed messages to be sent to an inactive app on your phone, giving you a signal that something needed your attention. Now when someone called you, your Skype app would be notified even when it wasn’t running.

While this seemed like a good solution, in practice it still wasn’t as seamless as a regular phone conversation. Testing with various VOIP apps led to different results. Depending on how long ago you had logged in to your VOIP app, your ability to receive a push notification could expire. Some push notifications were less than instant – often I would be notified that someone was trying to call me 30 seconds after they actually had. This timeframe wasn’t quick enough to allow me to answer an incoming call. On the occasions when the notification came quickly enough, in the majority of cases, the call couldn’t be connected by accepting the call through the push notification.

The result was more of a pager system. Get a push notification on your VOIP app, call the person back a minute or two later.

However, that has all changed with multitasking. Skype can now run 24/7 on your iPhone in the background, reacting instantly to incoming calls. You can be in a conversation, put Skype in the background, bring up a web page, and then switch back to Skype.

Add to that the new ability to change the background wallpaper, and it makes me think that Steve just jailbroke the iPhone

Update: “We are releasing it for end users for iPhone and iPod touch for users this summer. For the 3GS and iPod touch 3rd gen. And, for iPhone 3G and iPod touch 2nd gen, they will run many things… but there are some things they won’t run, like multitasking.”

Looks like no multitasking for iPhone 3G and iPod touch 2nd gen users.

List of features in the new iPhone OS 4.0