Following the footstep of now-defunct Palm’s WebOS, Windows Phone incorporates multitasking in its mobile OS with application cards. To toggle between the running apps, you just need to press the back (left facing arrow) button to make the phone show a card-based view of all the applications running in the background.

This comes as a welcome upgrade for the Windows Mobile enthusiasts, since multitasking is one of the bare essentials now; with every other mobile OS already using multitasking to keep simultaneous tasks humming along. Google’s Android OS has been using the home button very effectively ever since its launch, which allows the user to have all the active apps appear in a grid form. Apple’s iOS incorporated multitasking much later, with a long press of the home button bringing up all the background applications in the dock.

In spite of the fact that Windows 7.5 and all the devices of Nokia’s Lumia series got multitasking much later than other OS’s, the back button holds a lot of functionalities behind it.

Even though the whole of Nokia’s Lumia series is equipped with poweful CPUs (Lumia 610 – 800 Mhz, Lumia 710 – 1.4 Ghz, Lumia 800 – 1.4 Ghz, Lumia 900 – 1.4 Ghz), it’s good to have your phone functioning at its best performance and not being pulled down by active applications which are not in use. Here’s how you can get rid of idle applications and speed up your Lumia device.

1) With multiple applications running, long press the back button to reveal all the active applications.
2) Keep pressing the back button until you reach the home-screen on your Lumia device.
3) Repeat the procedure by selecting every single active application using the multitasking option.
4) Check if all the applications have been terminated by revealing the cards using the window button. If it’s just the homescreen card, all other applications have been closed.