One of Google Android’s strong suits has always been it’s support for multi-tasking. When you leave an app to do something else on your phone, most apps will continue to run in a low-power state in the background, letting you stream music while you surf the web or pick up right where you left off in a game.
But multi-tasking can be so much more. On a desktop operating system like Windows, for instance, you can perform all sorts of actions without minimizing the currently running app at all.
Soon you may be able to do that on Android as well — assuming you’re using the custom version of Android known as ParanoidAndroid.
The developers of ParanoidAndroid recently introduced a tool called Halo. When it’s running, a small circle appears on your screen and lets you see notifications from other apps. Tap on the screen to interact with those notifications and you can bring up a small version of your messaging, email, or other apps to respond to messages and then quickly get back to what you were doing.
Now the team is introducing Halo 2.0, and it takes things a step further — showing you the actual notification area, just as if you had pulled it down from the standard Android tray. This lets you reply to a text message, control audio playback, or do many other things without leaving the app you’re using.
Among other things, this could turn a phone with a 5 inch or larger display into a device that’s easy to use with one hand. Can’t reach all the way up to the top of the screen to access notifications? Just move your Halo icon to the lower left side of the screen and tap it whenever you need it.
Halo 2.0 is built into Paranoid Android 3.97 and later. You can find download links and more details in the team’s post on Google+.
via Android Police
“One of Google Android’s strong suits has always been it’s support for multi-tasking.”
Yeeaah, that is not true.