Turns Out That Closing Background Apps in iPhone Isn’t Good for Your Phone

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Let’s face it; an iPhone’s battery isn’t exactly nuclear-powered.

Meaning to say that it drains pretty fast. A bit too fast for our liking, in fact.

To combat this problematic issue, we tend to perform 3 actions:

  1. Switch our phones to Battery Saver mode AND Airplane mode.
  2. Turn off our phones altogether.
  3. Close all background apps and make sure only one app is running at any one time.

Now, I’m a fan of the first and third options (the second one is simply too troublesome for my liking), and I have been a faithful user of them since my damn iPhone started releasing more energy than it was absorbing.

So imagine my surprise, shock and despair when I found out that…

Closing background apps doesn’t help your performance or improve battery life.

Rather…

It’s the total opposite.

It actually worsens your battery life.

Image: Imgflip

Tech Lessons 101: Resources

So… why do we close background apps in the first place? Who taught us that this method could actually preserve your battery life?

The answer’s pretty simple.

Nobody.

At some point in our lives, we learnt that it’s a good idea to close applications that are taking up resources on slow-running computers. When too many programmes are running at once, your already-slow computer could arguably compete with a tortoise in a race.

Now, being humans, we have a tendency to apply acquired knowledge and skills in other varying sectors.

And being humans, we applied the aforementioned logic of “closing background programmes” to our smartphones.

But it seems that your iPhone… isn’t a goddamn Tortoise XL Desktop.

iOS System

Apple’s iOS, which powers iPhones and iPads, doesn’t function like a conventional computer operating system. The act of closing apps does not help your performance, or improve battery life.

In fact, according to the developer and Apple watcher John Gruber, it’s doing the opposite.

Apps running on an iPhone or iPad are frozen in place when they’re not being utilised, which means that “they aren’t taking up system resources as much as, say, an app on a computer might be if it were just minimized to your system tray”.

So yeah, contrary to popular belief, the apps stay frozen and don’t absorb battery life.

Closing and reopening apps, however, takes up more resources.

“[IOS] is so good at this that unfreezing a frozen app takes up way less CPU (and energy) than relaunching an app that had been force quit,” Gruber said. “Not only does force quitting your apps not help, it actually hurts. Your battery life will be worse and it will take much longer to switch apps if you force quit apps in the background.”

He then points to an email to an Apple customer from Apple senior vice president of software engineering Craig Federighi, who said he doesn’t “close apps and that doing so doesn’t save battery life.”

My whole life has been a lie

Not gonna lie, folks. I’m feeling really crestfallen right now.

It’s like knowing Hogwarts doesn’t actually exist in real life, you know?

But it’s alright; I have recovered.

Well, guess it’s time to overload my iPhone with apps then!

Since you’re here, why not watch a video about an NTU student who went all out to impress his crush, only to end up in…tragedy? Here, watch it and do remember to share it (and also subscribe to Goody Feed YouTube channel)!

This article was first published on goodyfeed.com

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