Closing apps on your phone to save battery actually just makes things worse

If you’re one of those people who can’t stand to have unread emails — or at least can’t stand all those numbers on your smartphone screen — then you probably close all your apps pretty often, too.

It’s become somewhat of a habit for many smartphone users these days — you double tap the home button on your iPhone or tap the multitasking key on your Android, and then just start swiping until everything is gone, clear, clean. Me, on the other hand, I have 3,283 emails on my iPhone, along with a lot of other notifications that drive my friends crazy. 

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Closing apps does not improve battery life

But here’s the thing, if you constantly close your apps as a way to preserve battery power — you can go ahead and stop doing that.

Both Apple and Google recently confirmed that closing apps does nothing to improve your phone’s battery life. And in fact, it could actually make things worse, according to Hiroshi Lockheimer, the VP of Engineering for Android.

 

Both iOS and Android have algorithms for managing your apps when you aren’t using them. When you close your apps, it forces them to reboot and completely start over the next time you open them.

According to Wired, you’re better off just letting your phone’s system do its thing: ‘They’ll close apps that need to be closed, typically ones that have been dormant for a while or are using more power or memory than they should. They’re very good at knowing when you’re going to need data, or want a refresh, or open an app again. Apps that are already in memory open quickly, rather than having to fully start again; it’s like waking your computer from sleep rather than rebooting it completely.’

How to actually preserve your phone’s battery life

If you need to save battery power, here are a few tricks that can help:

• Turn down the brightness.
• Turn off location sharing for apps when you don’t need it.
• Turn off background refresh for apps.
• Use low power mode on iOS or Doze on Android.
• Put your phone in airplane mode.

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