Multitask better on Android with Cornerstone
Androids current version of multitasking is simply the ability to have more than one app running and switch between them when you want to. It’s definitely better than having to open and close every app whenever you want to start a new one, but it’s also not the easiest way to get some things done. That’s where Cornerstone comes in. Cornerstone takes multitasking to a whole new level by allowing you to run three apps simultaneously on the same screen.
As you can see in the video, it doesn’t handle screen sizing all that well, and that might be a major problem with some apps. It also will most likely never be able as a download in the Android Market. Because of the nature of the app it requires it to be built into the Android code in order to function properly. That means that you will need to have a rooted device and a developer will have to choose to bake this into their ROM. Far down the road it might mean that you could get this on say your Galaxy Tab if Samsung decides to include this in their version of Android. I personally don’t see that last scenario happening, but I’ve seen weirder things happen.
The only device I know of that you can currently try this out on is an HP Touchpad that is running a special version of CM9. I tried it out on my Touchpad, and while it was pretty cool to be able to have three apps running at the same time, I don’t see how I would use it all that often so I went back to a Cornerstone-less version of CM9. There is talk of CyanogenMod adding this to all their current ROMs, which would definitely get this multitasking experience in front of a lot of users to try out. The Cornerstone source code is available for any developer that wants to add it to their ROMs.
[Cornerstone via liliputing]
