Multitasking 50 Apps With Palm Pre Plus

One of the biggest differences between the regular Palm Pre and the Palm Pre Plus is the doubling of the RAM and storage capacity of the device. The Pre Plus has 16GB of storage which allows you to install more apps and multimedia. More interesting though is the increase in RAM to 512MB from the regular Pre's 256MB. To test out the new RAM limits, someone loaded 50 apps, simultaneously!The folks at PreCentral got a Pre Plus and decided to put it through its paces. For the longest time, Palm defended the inability of PalmOS to multitask saying the user didn't really care if a phone was really multitasking or just appeared to by being able to easily switch between apps. It did this by saving the apps state, so when selected, it appeared to be running as if it never stopped.

With WebOS though, Palm gave the OS the ability to multitask, bringing it on par with smartphone platforms like Android and Windows Mobile. In fact, WebOS may be the king of smartphone multitasking. With the regular Pre, a certain amount of RAM is used up for the OS itself, as well as key functions like the phone, data services, etc. The extra 256MB on the Pre Plus though seems to be available to the user so they can run as many apps as the heart desires.

No one needs to run 50 apps of course. I rarely get above 20 apps on my PC. It is nice to know though that the limits of WebOS are available RAM and the user's wishes.