Closing apps that are not being used on your iPhone will not save its battery life. It can’t get more official than Apple’s senior VP of software, Craig Federighi, saying so. It’s a popular ‘urban legend’ which has been going around for ages. The truth is, force-closing certain applications like Facebook’s flawed older version of its iOS app may have preserved the device’s power.
But unless an application is doing stuff like monitoring your location continuously, playing background audio and so on, it might do more harm than good to close them unnecessarily. In fact, ex-Apple Genius Kyle Richter, even wrote a blog post on the subject. According to him, inactive apps or those not running, are not related to multi-tasking or functioning in the background.
This leaves ‘backgrounded’ or suspended applications in the equation. The former consists of short running and long running software. iPhone users are generally alerted to anything that is causing a drain on the battery level. When such a notification pops up, it makes sense to shut down the offending app. So what about those in the suspended state?
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Richter says repeatedly exiting and relaunching applications that are generally suspended, will have a comparatively worse effect on your iPhone’s battery, than if you’d just let them be. Since iOS devices are equipped with powerful processors and memory modules too, there’s no point force-closing software for the sake of the CPU or RAM either.
As for Federighi’s comment, in an email reply shared with 9to5Mac, he intervened on behalf of Tim Cook and answered in the negative to whether the Apple chief closed multi-tasking iOS apps frequently and if it’s necessary to do so to save battery life. Don’t let any other expert tell you otherwise!