Closing your apps to extend the life of your battery: myth or reality?

On an Android smartphone or iPhone, many people wonder if closing their apps is helpful to conserve their devices battery. In fact, it’s best left open and here’s why.

Smartphone battery life is a hot topic as we all look for ways to make our devices last as long as possible before recharging.

It is a common belief that one should close their applications after using them.

Have we finished using Facebook? Hop, we move the app up to close it.

In fact, this will have the opposite effect on the battery!

Closing apps consumes more battery power

Whether we have an iPhone or an Android phone, it is better to leave our apps open and let them run in the background rather than closing them.

Although this may sound contradictory, closing it and then reopening it later in the day will actually drain the device battery more.

That’s because opening the app takes more power from the device’s CPU and RAM instead of letting it run in the background.

When we open a closed app, our phone has to execute all the code of the app as well as fetch information about our account on it.

In short, this again requires a lot of batteries if you intend to reuse it later instead of leaving the app open.

This is absolutely true for devices that are less powerful and which will take more energy to reopen.

So it is better to leave the applications open, while they will fall into the effect, let’s say “asleep”.

Obviously, if we know we won’t be using such an app again anytime soon, it’s best to close it, but as a general rule we recommend the opposite.

Your phone battery will thank you!