Why you should never close your apps on an iPhone to try and save battery life

There's not too much wrong with the iPhone but its short battery life has always been a source of frustration for its owners.
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iPhones

Obviously, powering such advanced technology requires more battery usage than keeping the old Nokia 3310 running.

There are many myths that floated around about how iPhone users can extend their phone's battery life without having to carry around a portable charger.

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One of these has been to double-tap the home button and then swipe up to force close individual apps that have previously been opened.

However, it seems that this is in fact just a myth and it will not help eek-out a few more hours of battery life.

Renowned Apple pundit John Gruber shared his expert opinion over the subject on DaringFireball, arguing that the tactic is actually detrimental to battery life.

He said: "The iOS system is designed so that none of the above justifications for force quitting are true.

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"Apps in the background are effectively “frozen”, severely limiting what they can do in the background and freeing up the RAM they were using.

"iOS is really, really good at this. It 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.

"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."

So, Mr Gruber argues, closing background apps that "locking up unnecessary RAM and consuming unnecessary CPU cycles" won't actually save battery life.

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He said that Apple's own advice to customers is to only force an app to close when it's unresponsive.

The company said: "When you double-click the Home button, your recently used apps appear. The apps aren’t open, but they’re in standby mode to help you navigate and multitask."

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