You notice that your iPhone is starting to run low on battery, so the first thing you do is double-tap on the home button and flick away to close all the running apps in an attempt to save battery life.
This idea that force quitting open apps will help make an iOS device's battery last a little longer is something that has been believed and accepted by many users for years. However, now, Apple is finally weighing in on this, revealing that it is nothing more than a myth.
A curious iPhone user decided to get some clear answers about whether or not this small hack is beneficial to preventing a dead battery.
"Do you quit your iOS multitasking apps frequently and is this necessary for battery life?" the user asked Apple CEO Tim Cook in an email.
Cook did not respond to the question, but the user did get some feedback from the company's sensor vice president of software engineering and head of iOS, Craig Federighi.
Put simply, Federighi responded with a "no and no."
So, there we have it; force quitting apps doesn't do a single thing for battery life. In fact, this myth has been debunked before, most recently by a former Apple Genius and independent Mac technician.
Kyle Richter revealed in a blog post last month that force quitting apps actually has the adverse effect on the iPhone's battery life.
Richter highlights that this rumor first came about when Apple introduced multitasking and the background apps with iOS 4. While force quitting an app in the background, like a music app, can benefit battery life, most apps left alone go into a "suspended" state and cause no harm.
"These apps are using no battery, processor, or network time. They do use a small amount of passive memory to enable quick relaunch through app state persistence," he writes. "Keeping an app suspended allows for faster relaunching and state restoration than a cold launch provides. This was Apple's intention when creating the suspend state for apps since Apple always wants to make sure the device is providing the fastest experience."
Force quitting an app actually uses up more battery life than just leaving the app suspended because the app purges all its code from the RAM of the phone and must reload when the app is reopened. This means force closing and reopening the same apps over and over again will hurt the iPhone's battery life down the line.
It's suggested to only force quit an app when it's frozen.
Source: 9 to 5 Mac
Photo: Sean MacEntee | Flickr
