Playbook Beats the iPad and Android 3.0 in Multitasking

With Google’s release of information on Android 3.0 we learn more about how the OS multitasks. And it seems like the Playbook is the best multitasker of the tablets. Shocking. Getting to it, here’s how Google describes multitasking on Android 3:

Multitasking is a key strength of Android and it is central to the Android 3.0 experience. As users launch applications to handle various tasks, they can use the Recent Apps list in the System Bar to see the tasks underway and quickly jump from one application context to another. To help users rapidly identify the task associated with each app, the list shows a snapshot of its actual state when the user last viewed it.

So what you have here is apps may or may not continue to run in the background but only one app can be viewed at a time. So when you switch apps they may background task but you won’t know it (well unless it’s streaming music or something) but from a  visual perspective you’ll see the last state of the app. This is similar to the iPad. Contrast this to the Playbook where you can see multiple apps running in real time. Here check it out:

Ok this may all kill your battery but it is a significant feature. Just add a Windows 7 style ‘snap’ so you can have two apps filling half the screen and it really means something.

So, is this significant or just lipstick on a pig?

via PCWorld