[Nexus One General] big_adventure:
Just SEARCH - this has been discussed in excruciating detail.

Don't know. So much depends on the basic architecture of the kernel and OS. The Nexus under 2.1 was a little slower than an iPad, but a lot faster than a 3GS. It seems (from your information) that Apple did manage to improve the performance by a bit with iOS4 - you talk about getting "around 15000" in SunSpider, and I don't see better than ~17K on the 3GS running 3.1 in front of me. But that's NOTHING like what Google managed between 2.1 and 2.2.

It's nice of you to admit that. :-) All multitasking EVER is is having background processes accessing functions. The app still has to run, and it still DOES in iOS4. Apple has simply chosen to make a very limited subset of total system functionality available at this time. That's all it will take to get 90% of most "multitasking NOW" requests out of the queue, BUT, iStuff still won't be able to do one of the biggest bonuses I get out of Android multitasking: Background apps (that don't consume any CPU or anything else except when running) being able to check for content updates automatically, when I want and how I want. Specifically, Listen goes out once per day and checks for new podcasts, and downloads them automatically if they are there. NewsRob syncs with Google Reader once per day, making sure that my RSS feeds, with different behaviors per feed, are waiting for me to read on the métro or while I'm getting coffee. Le Monde syncs a few times a day, making sure that I always have news updated when I want it. None of these are widgets. Evernote syncs my notes in the background, so I don't have to wait to refresh it. Dropbox will update without me having to remember to do it.

An iPhone/Pad/Pod can do all of that, but only manually! You have to open NewsRack to get RSS sync'd, open Le Monde to get updates, open iPod to get podcasts, open Evernote to sync notes, open Dropbox to sync files. That means at least 15-20 minutes (I have a lot of RSS feeds, saving pages for off-line reading) with a network connection, manually opening and closing apps. Thanks, that just cost me $75 a day!

You are discussing 2 different things here - Most of Apple's own apps have ALWAYS had full multitasking. Email, iPod, Calendar have always had the ability to run in the background, sync with the cloud, sync with Exchange since that was added, play music, etc. They are not limited to 7 APIs - they actually get hundreds, but those are not public APIs, they are private and reserved for Apple, and even if an enterprising coder figured out how to access one, their app would be blocked from the App Store for SDK violations. This is all very common knowledge.

Push notifications can be used by any 3rd party app since iPhone OS3, and they work well, sort of. Any app can register with Apple's servers. As long as one Push-registered app is running, your phone maintains a session with Apple's Push servers. When the app's provider (BoxCar, Facebook, MobileMe, etc.) has something to tell you, it sends a notification to you. You get that horrible pop-up, and you can either dismiss it or close your currently-running application and switch to the new one (involving fully launching it and restoring it's last known and saved state). If you want to go back to the previously-running application, you have to close the new app and relaunch the old one. This will be addressed with the new "fast-switching" in iOS4 (the phone will hold inactive app state in memory until it needs the memory for something else).

Android already has this for every single app (both app-state caching and real-life multitasking), and has since the beginning.

Again, Apple has already identified the 7 APIs, and background location services is one of them. Your TomTom app (if you can make it run - it sucks violently, with teeth, on the iPad and usually refuses to identify the GPS module) should / will run in the background as long as it is properly coded to access the background location services. But obviously, the TomTom app will have to keep running, since it has to continue spitting directions. this is exactly what happens today with navigation apps on Android (including the magical and free Google navigation).

This is a massive pet peeve of mine: AGPS is NOT the use of non-GPS services to locate you. AGPS is (optionally) using other sources IN ADDITION to "classic" GPS to locate you - typically to make it faster to calculate and fix. You can use "non-GPS location services" or something like that to indicate using cell towers or WiFi hotspots for position information. Since there is one background location API in iOS4, I think that IT will choose GPS or non-GPS services all by itself. As an aside, this will open you up to the biggest battery killer on an Android phone - leaving your GPS app up and forgetting about it. That'll kill 50% in a couple of hours, even with the screen off. Ugh.

I can't see how iOS4 would change battery life on a 3GS now, since no background API capable apps are yet available. I can't really see it making it better or worse, unless they had identified a bug in a previous version. Since there were already numerous updates to IPhone OS3, I imagine that Apple already corrected the big ones.

If you are going to come onto XDA, in the Nexus forum, and regurgitate SPJ's mantras, please, at least do yourself a favor and do some research beforehand. These little chats will go so much better for you.