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For years, any smartphone user has heard at least once in their lives the phrase that suggests you should close unused apps in the background to save battery life. Older iPhone guides have been telling us the same, along with every other presentation on how to save your phone’s battery and keep it going to for longer. However, the App vice president of software engineering and head of iOS – Craig Federighi – recently admitted that at least, in what concerns iPhone 6 and the newest iOS versions, things couldn’t be more false.
Federighi openly stated in an email response that closing the apps on your iPhone in order to save your battery is now nothing more than a myth. The reason behind that is the fact that the most recent versions of the iOS have taken the liberty of adding an option in the system settings that allows you to stop apps from functioning in the background. Federighi explained that the ‘multitasking’ apps do not literally work, even when they’re tabbed out of.
According to him, the method that the iOS handles multitasking does not rely on background processes. Instead, the operating system freezes the apps that you used after a short time, keeping them in the state they were last time they were accessed. If you go back, the phone will update the app in question once you access it, so it matches the real time data it’s supposed to display. Surely, you will have noticed this with apps such as Skype or Facebook, where normally you will have to wait for a few seconds after you’ve launched the app of choice in order for it to display what you wish for it to.
There are, however, some types of apps that will continue running in the background, and you may want to reconsider keeping them on if you’re looking to prolong your battery life. Such apps are music players, location services, recording audio. One of the most notorious ones that tax you on battery life because it constantly checks for incoming VOIP calls is Skype. That one, you may want to put to sleep if you want to preserve battery juice.
Lastly, after bursting the bubble of the apps running in the background, Apple offered some other tips on how you can save battery life instead of always manually going into the app manager to swipe up everything you find open. Their recommendations include keeping your phone up to date with the latest updates, reducing the display brightness, using WiFi over data, enabling low battery power when needed, not exposing your phone to either very hot or very cold temperatures and taking the phone out of its case before charging, if the situation calls for it.
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