Any proof?
AFAIK background agents can do that. The main difference in WP8.1 is that background agents can now be triggered by other events than just time, meaning they could trigger when an SMS is received, rather than just once every 30 minutes. They are still limited to running for only a few seconds and very sporadically however.
No, the triggers aren't just time trigger, there is the push notification trigger, location trigger, various trigger for sensors, BT and others.
On the other hand, I'm not yet convinced this is really the solution I was talking about. What if an app wanted to use the flashlight to blink S.O.S while the app is in the background? Maybe you're right, but I'd be surprised if that worked without requiring changes to the APIs, which WP8.1 apps can't take advantage of.
The only changes wich the APIs require is the addition of some sort of background task that take cares about the flash light.
I'd like an option to activate full multitasking like in a PC. In settings, the user could choose the apps that are allowed to run in the background by default. The task manager should inform the resource consumption of each app and provide commands to manually suspend apps if they are using too much resources, and also to allow momentarily background execution for apps that aren't allowed by default.
This behavior transfer the responsibility of resource management to the user, so It shouldn't be activated by default. Although, It would be a great feature for power users.
We call these devices
smartphone, so if the users need to take care also of the device resources why we call it
smart?
B) I'm just sharing my experiences with the devs I emailed to in the forum. That's all. Is up to you to believe it or not. Sure, they can shut me off by all means and I will just leave the platform for good since the apps do not meet my expectations. Who cares?? I'm just a consumer.
But still remain that those devs lied to you.
Yes you are a consumer but I think that you need to care about where is the problem. You can't complain with the firefighters if the ambulance was not able to reach you in time.
Many complain with the OS about the apps quality but many times developers have all the tools to release a good app with the right experience but they don't because don't use the tools and the API that they have.
C) Perhaps I misunderstood how Windows Phone multitasking works. I'm fine with that. All I asking for is I need my downloading queues to continue even the apps are not in the foreground. Simple as that. But WP cannot provide me that! You can give me tons of technical explanations but if at the end of the day, I still cannot achieve what I can on Android.
It is not so complicated when you launch and app it goes in a state called Activate, when you switch to another app or to the startscreen the app goes in a state called Suspended in that state the app is like freezed with no activities of any sort and remain in that state until you return to that app, or if you launch another app that require more memory than is available the suspended apps will be terminated and the memory will be freed.
If a devs want to do somethings when its apps isn't running they have 2 way: do it with push notification or use a background task that is a special apps that can do pretty much everithing in the background, but have some limitation on the amount of RAM and CPU utilization.
Those background tasks can be lanched based on some triggers, a special kind of events raised by the OS.
The most poular is the timetrigger, it is raised every 30 minutes and the background task lanched, there also a push notification trigger that is raised when the phone riceives a push notification, the location trigger is raised when the phone is in a specific location, and there are many others triggers.
As I said a background task can do everything, downloads something, manage files, updates a SQLite database, and pretty much everything is not related to the UI, but developers need respect the constrains to do those tasks.
I'd wager that what you're observing is nothing more than W10M no longer automatically turning the light back off, when the app that turned it on is suspended (no longer in the foreground). That means the flashlight app isn't running in the background on W10M any more than it was on WP8.1. That would also explain why the flashlight app can't blink S.O.S. when not in the foreground.
And what is the problem here? The important thing is to reach the goal.
Here again though, I'd like to stress that what you're seeing is NOT a change in how W10M handles background tasks or multitasking. I think we'll see very few changes in that area... if any! What you are seeing, which has been my main point all along in this thread, are improvements to apps!
That's partially untrue, yes basically the principle is the same: background task triggered by some special events but there are many changes first of all the CPU and memory limitations are increased drastically, the triggers of Windows and Windows Phone are unified (until now some triggers aren't available on both) and there are tons of new triggers.
Besides there is a new feature called AppService that is basically a custom background task so developer can call another app (or better its background task) to run in the background. By example if I want to post on facebook within my app I don't need to handle all the facebook's stuff, all I need to do is call the facebook app and say to it:
please post this content on my page", or I can pass an image to the Instragran app say to it to apply a filter an post it on my account.
Yes these example are very triviasl, but with AppService a dev can do pretty much everithing.
The problem now is if developers will use all this staff.
Among other things AppService is a feature that is in WP for a while, the Contact app of WP8.1 use it to get data from the current Facebook.
I want more live tiles running all at once and I want them to update more often. Then I want developers to use them and update the content more often. This would be possible with improved multitasking, right?
Just my two cents.
Best Wishes
They only need to use push notifications
However, the consumer doesn't care. We don't care whether or not it SHOULD work, or if it COULD work, but we care whether or not it DOES work. And as chmun77 pointed out, the things he's complaining about DO NOT work. Maybe they could, but they don't. Who cares if it's the OS's fault or the developer's fault? At then end of the day, the functionality is not there.
You need to care so you can complain with the right people and ask they to fix it.
The people need to understand that the applications don't work by magic but there is some developer (which isn't the developer of the OS) that implements (by himself) some feature provided by the OS so Microsoft can adds some features to the OS but can't adds support for those features to all the apps that Microsoft doesn't own and if developers don't use them the problem still there, so you need to complain to the developers of the app and ask them to implement that feature!
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