Are you closing apps too often?

Do you have an iPhone?
Chances are you open your multitasking bar to close apps and "save battery life."

As it turns out, you don't need to "close" those apps, since they're not really using any processing power...




Here are some highlights from mobile educaiton consultant Fraser Speirs's blog.

1. If someone tells you that all the apps in the multitasking bar are running, using up memory or sucking power, they are wrong.
2.  When you hit the home button, an app moves from Active to Background and quickly to the Suspended state where it no longer uses CPU time or drains power.
3.  An app may request an additional 10 minutes of Background running to complete a big task before becoming Suspended.
4. If memory is becoming scarce, iOS will automatically move Suspended apps into the Not Running state and reclaim their memory.
5. Five classes of apps - audio, GPS, VOIP, Newsstand and accessory apps - and some built-in apps such as Mail may run indefinitely in the background until they complete their task.

Let's get technical: iOS apps have five states of execution. These are:

• Not running - the app has been terminated or has not been launched.

• Inactive - the app is in the foreground but not receiving events (for example, the user has locked the device with the app active)

• Active - the normal state of "in use" for an app

• Background - the app is no longer on-screen but is still executing code

• Suspended - the app is still resident in memory but is not executing code

Active and Inactive are not interesting for this discussion. Most of the confusion is around what happens as an app goes from Active to Background to Suspended to Not Running.
When you press the home button, the app moves from Active to Background. Most apps usually then go from Background to Suspended in a matter of seconds.

Source Fraser Speirs VIA Tested.com