Samsung Wave: How to multitask with the Bada OS

June 7, 2010 6:00 am

Categories: Guides Extra Tags: bada, PP, Samsung, wave

The iPhone series has been around for years, but it’s only just getting multitasking now. The Samsung Wave brings multitasking to the Bada OS from step one. Bada likes to make things simple and easy, so it doesn’t shout too loudly about its multitasking chops, but we’ll show you how to surf over the Samsung Wave’s multitasking tide.

App switching the easy way
Bada ticks all the smartphone boxes. It has apps, it has widgets, it has a bloomin’ gorgeous touchscreen with a Super AMOLED display that can blow the iPhone’s out of the water, but some say that a phone’s not a real smartphone without multitasking.

Multitasking isn’t one of the top features that Samsung’s shouting about with Bada, but you can do it. It’s dead simple, too. Wherever you are, whether surfing the net or tearing around some tracks playing racer Asphalt 5 while on the bus, just hold down the central diamond-shaped button for a sec or two and the multitask menu will pop up.

This shows you all the main processes that are currently running on your Samsung Wave, each with a little red circle in the corner which lets you close the app down. Getting frustrated with sluggish performance? Check this screen out as you might have half the Samsung app store running in the background.

There’s also a button to close all running apps in one sweep, and a shortcut to return to the home screen view without closing any apps – this one’s great if you want to check up on your Twitter feed quickly while checking out an app or game. Thanks to the Samsung Wave’s 1GHz Hummingbird, it can run a handful of apps without any performance dip, and you can switch between them in seconds, lag-free.

All the updates, all the time
An always connected device, the Samsung Wave can grab updates from Facebook, Twitter and Myspace while you’re doing other things, making this jump-in, jump-out multitasking manoevre even more useful. All you have to do is input your login details to the My Account setup menu and you can consider your social life fully multitasked up to the eyeballs.

This isn’t strictly multitasking – it’s more just bringing your social networking up-to-speed with your text messages and calls with Push-style delivery tech, but it makes the Samsung Wave‘s multitasking chops way more useful.

Kicking out the jams
App multitasking can only go so far. As many apps as you like may be whirring away in the background, giving the Samsung Wave’s 1GHz Hummingbird processor some extra 1s and 0s to chew on, you can only use one at a time – there’s only one screen to look at, after all.

The Samsung Wave does allow for multitasking that you can really hear happening too though, with the music player and built-in FM radio. These two can pump out tunes as you’re playing away with other parts of the phone, and you can control them without having to drop back into the apps themselves.

How? With the drop-down notification menu. You can access it from any home screen, the app menu or any apps that don’t kick the top battery/signal info bar off its usual spot. Pull it down with a swipe gesture and you’ll see a remote control that lets you pause or switch tracks in the music player, or change the station in the FM radio.

The only time apps will stop your tunes from pumping is when it needs to take centre stage with its own music or sound – and even then the tunes will continue from where they stopped once the app kicks the bucket. Unless you’re using the radio. The Samsung Wave can’t time travel. Maybe it’ll be added in an update.

Check out the Samsung Wave in action…

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Samsung Wave: How to multitask with the Bada OS

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