With the release of the new operating system iOS 4 from Apple, the iPhone and iPod now have multitasking and, along with that, notifications from applications running in the background. This post is to show how much more elegant, in my opinion anyway, the Android implementation is.

Android has the concept of a notification bar, which is at the top of the screen and is visible in all applications. When a new notification comes in, it is flashed up in the notification bar, so you can glance at it and decide what to do. Dragging the notification bar down shows a list of recent notifications, be they emails, text, tweets or whatever, and you can touch each one to open the associated application.

Notifications in iOS 4 are implemented as pop ups. So, you could be browsing a website and you'll get a pop up window to say you've got a new text, then another for a new email, then another.. Distracting? Definitely. Annoying? Probably.