In the past week, some French Android users began seeing the infamous Android 4.1.2 update rolling out on the Samsung Galaxy S III. Reports have been coming out over the past month about Samsung rolling out 4.1.2 in Poland, the UK & Germany – this after news came out out last November that the S III would be receiving the update starting in December. It seems that Samsung’s latest candidate for the roll out is France, as twitter was buzzing a bit around the S III update this weekend, which, in addition to performance updates, brought the long-awaited multiview feature, which has been available on the Galaxy Note for some time.
I played around with the multiview feature a bit, and found it quite reminiscent of Metro’s slide-to-multiview feature. Activated in main parameters section of the Android, the feature enabled a blue tab on the left of the screen which, when swiped, opens up a list of apps which can be used in multiview. Here you can see me scrolling through Facebook while looking at a map on Google Chrome, I was easily able to simultaneously load new pages, scroll, and type on each of the apps.Without rooting the Android, currently only certain apps are available in the multiview function.
This is definitely going to be a hard blow to Windows 8, who seemed to pride itself on it’s ability to do real multi-tasking; now Samsung S III users, all 41 Million of them, will be showing off their ability to load multiple apps at once, something that the smart phone space has been longing. As an iPhone user (for now), I can definitely say that the monofunctionality of my iPhone is starting to get on my nerves, though I haven’t yet pledged allegiance to my next phone maker: Android, iPhone, Windows 8, or FirefoxOS. So many options, it’s almost as if we’re no longer operating in a monopolistic market anymore. Yay.