iPhone OS 4.0 To Include Backgrounding?

theboygeniusreport is reporting some rumours from a “trusty Apple connect” about iPhone OS version 4.0. According to the source the following features may appear in the upcoming version of the OS:

• There will be multi-touch gestures OS-wide. (Would make sense for that as the rumored OS for the iTablet is close if not the same as the iPhone)
• “A few new ways” to run applications in the background — multitasking.
• Many graphical and UI changes to make navigating through the OS easier and more efficient. We haven’t had this broken down, but we can only hope for improved notifications, a refreshed homescreen, etc.
• The update will supposedly be available for only the iPhone 3G and 3GS, but will “put them ahead in the smartphone market because it will make them more like full-fledged computers” more than any other phone to date. Everyone is “really excited.”
• The last piece of information is the most vague, but apparently there will be some brand new syncing ability for the contacts and calendar applications.

This has some pretty big implications for VOIP applications such as Skype.

As of now, if you want to run a VOIP app on your iPhone or iPod touch, you must use an app which supports push notifications such as Fring or Truphone. Skype still does not support push notifications, despite having recently released a new version. Push notifications allow apple servers to “push” information to your device, as opposed to having your device “pull” the information from the internet. A quick example of push versus pull is mail versus telephone. When someone mails you a letter, you generally don’t know about it until you check your mailbox to see if there is something waiting for you. A phone will ring as soon as someone calls you – it doesn’t wait for you.

Of course this doesn’t matter if your application is running – Skype will tell you immediately that someone is calling you if it is running and active on your device. The problem is that Apple only currently allows users to run one app at a time. If the app doesn’t support push notifications, then as soon as you close it, you lose the ability to receive an incoming call.

Allowing apps to run in the background will allow app developers to not have to include push notifications, which seems to be something of a burden considering how many apps still lack this functionality. As backgrounding is one of the major draws to jailbreaking your iPhone, this might reduce the number of people jailbreaking for functionality reasons.

This doesn’t make push notifications obsolete of course. Apple’s intent when they decided to prevent backgrounding and instead use push notifications was to improve user experience by ensuring running apps had the full hardware capabilities of the device available to them (probably one of the reasons backgrounding is rumoured to be restricted to the iPhone 3G and 3GS and similarly-capable iPods), and to conserve battery life.