I/O Management

[Hiroller173]

I was trying to use my Droid for multiple tasks involving sound in and out when I got it confused. Started me thinking about the challenges of trying to listen to a podcast or music (streaming or stored), using the GPS for navigation and answering or placing a phone call at the same time. When trying this, I don't have control over what goes where from an input/output perspective. In my case, I plugged a cassette adapter into the headphone jack which played the podcast into my car stereo. However, when I tried to do a location search from the car dock (to initiate GPS), the voice search wasn't listening. However, when I used voice search in the browser, it worked. It also seems to matter which application is started first.

The question is if there is any application (or ability to create one) that would assign the headphone jack, internal speaker/mic and bluetooth to specific applications so that they can be used simultaneously as desired. In my case, I'd like the headphone jack to play the podcast, the GPS to listen to the internal microphone and speak through the internal speaker, and the phone to work through a bluetooth headset. Others might want to assign the same devices in a different way. It would seem like some kind of operating system tool or application would be necessary to get full multitasking flexibility out of Android devices.

Maybe there's already some solution to this that I don't know about?