I’ve been using MyTouch G2 (HTC Magic) for almost 3 months now, and I didn’t really experienced the benefits of multitasking on Android till yesterday.
Visiting a place where you never have been is not easy as it seems, so in my case I decided to track my path using GPS on HTC Magic and that way I can find my way back following my tracks, I used an application called Maverick which is an off-road GPS navigator, supporting Google and Bing maps and importantly offline maps a must have feature for people without a full data plan (like me ;)).
The application has a lot of great features, it shows the traveling speed, the distance, the live position on the map and you can also record your path and upload it to be accessible online or save it for later use.
As stated before, the tracking feature is the best one, but if this was an iPhone, things won’t work well, because once you receive a call, or want to check your tweets/emails the GPS app will shut down and tracking will stop immediately. Fortunately things works differently on Android where switching between apps will only make them run in the background, which means you can start record you GPS location while playing games or doing other stuff.
As you notice here, the little blue bullet on the top left of the screen which indicates that recording is always working while I’m using the browser.
With Android 2.0 things will get way better, where Google Maps integrates a real turn-by-turn GPS app. You can take a look at it here :
Here is what a reviewer said about the Tomtom app and multitasking on iPhone
Of course, until the iPhone supports multitasking, using it as a dedicated PND is still a risky move; one stray call during a pivotal moment in your travels and you can consider yourself lost.
So as a conclusion, multitasking can save you for sure, and the lack of this feature on the iPhone will always makes Android (or other platforms) push on this point.
Next review : How to install WPA enterprise certificates (*.cer) on Android, if some of you has been suffering from not getting connected to WPA wifis, stay tuned, the next review will show you how.
