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Apple Executive Confirms: Manually Quitting Apps Doesn't Improve Battery Life (bgr.com)
An anonymous reader writes: Apple software engineering VP Craig Federighi recently dispelled one of the more long-standing myths about iPhone battery life. In short, if you spend a few minutes every day double clicking the iPhone home button and manually closing up applications in an effort to maintain battery life, you're wasting your time. The reality is that the applications you see upon opening up the multitasking pane are actually nothing more than static images intended to represent a list of your most recently used applications. Apple support documents have indicated, "generally, there's no need to force an app to close unless it's unresponsive." Apple support docs further explain: "After you switch to a different app, some apps run for a short period of time before they're set to a suspended state. Apps that are in a suspended state aren't actively in use, open, or taking up system resources."
Except Waze... Waze is a battery hog. I always quit that as soon as I'm done with its navigation features.
Apps in suspended state very much do use up system resources. Maybe not the CPU, but they'll use up the RAM.
What about apps that are active in the background like Waze?
This is for regular apps. Apps that have background mode enabled can run in background and can consume CPU cycles. They can even use GPS, WiFi, LTE etc. That consumes battery. Most of the running or GPS apps run just fine in background. Otherwise they'd just stop recording once the screen locks or, worse, keep the screen on at all times.
Modern app appers like Apple know that ONLY apps can app apps, NOT LUDDITES who try to force quit apps like it's a LUDDITE computer!
Apps!
This was by far the most common myth about smartphone battery life I heard. The next one is to turn off GPS after use to save battery (as if it changed anything when not using an application using the GPS)
It's kinda funny, actually. The reason the iPhone didn't originally support mutli-tasking is battery life. Now that it does support it, even after going through the extremes they have to keep it lightweight, people still preemptively kill battery hoggish apps.
Apple did try to warn us.
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
The battery part is true. I am really impressed with iDevice standby battery life.
But the static image thing.. if that were true that all you are seeing in the task list is basically nothing more than the shortcuts to your recently running apps then that would mean that every time you switch to another app the first app would close. I know this is not the case because app state is preserved when you switch back to the app, even days later.
In addition, sometimes when switching back to an app, it won't function properly. Closing (by flicking up on the task list) and re-opening the app will fix it. So clearly the app's state was screwed up somehow.
Please correct my ignorance, I am not a big Apple user (only have the one work issued iPad).
My eyes reflect the stars and a smile lights up my face.
Any app that posts alerts or responds quickly based on location services or provides motion telemetry is pretty much burning battery, however.
Want to save power drain? Only allow location services to apps that need it all the time, and don't allow apps to update tracking on their icons (e.g. mail, texts, etc) unless you really want it.
And set battery to power conservation.
Push all apps you don't actually need to the cloud (delete).
That said, Twitter has no setting to disable internal pics and vids for it's feed so it sucks power big time, especially if location services is turned on, or "see nearby tweets".
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
I'd be more likely to believe it if one of their devs told me.
All the major smartphone OS vendors keep making this claim. They all assert there is "no reason" to close apps. Some of them were so sure of it they only included capability after enough people demanded it.
They always dredge up the same predictable excuse .. suspend to ram does not use any resources. This is only true of apps that don't explicitly try to do background shit anyway. Given most apps are funded by invading your privacy, wasting CPU time and using your data to exfiltrate information and download ads the suspend to ram theory is rather a pointless one to cling to. It isn't grounded in actual reality.
Audio streaming apps (especially ones that are live streaming like TuneIn, etc.) seem to try and continue buffering the stream after you disconnect bluetooth or unplug the headphones. I don't dislike that feature, but it can really kill your battery if you, say, shut off your car and just grab your phone then go inside a building with little to no cell coverage. That few minutes of the cell radio struggling to maintain the audio stream under poor RF conditions can chew through some battery very quickly.
So yeah, I'll still be killing apps as I see fit. Why an Apple executive would even waste his breath telling people not to force-close apps is beyond me. Too many home buttons failing under warranty?
Everyone is listing off apps that do suck cpu cycles. So apple is wrong about this. So is google. We keep getting these explanation from these vendors which doesnt seem to match real world experiences. Thats because vendors use imaginary scenarios, static apps that dont use resources like gps, cpu or network in the background, which is fine for a game, but reporting apps use cycles.
Google goes even farther and says task killers DECREASE battery life, because the task killer will run often. Total bullshit, but as its easy to test and see the results.
I think think the vendors are using unrealistic use cases, apple and google thinks the average use will just call/text and brows the web, so all other apps are a "rare" thing so its excluded.
First off, these gadgets are not telephones, they are computers: Computers you are not permitted to control. Making it impossible to understand anything that is going on, is part of the toy interface designed to prevent you from even attempting to be anything but a pawn, a slave to this Telescreen, this panopticon, this Simon Legree in a pretty, slick case. Why would anyone want such a gadget, much less pay for one? I hate to say it but Stallman was right.
You know, they do make open source pocket computers with telephone capabilities. They outsell the ones you're ranting about 2 to 1 in the US and by a larger ratio across the world.
Quitting things _unequivocally_ makes these devices run better, particularly for video applications. There are far too many occasions where a video will simply not launch until other apps are closed, even 'suspended' ones.
Stallman gets a lot of shit but, more often than not, he's right. People laugh him off because he presents very stark predictions of a dystopian future that is in sharp contrast to what one sees at any given moment. I think he understands The Slow Boil that we are currently experiencing while the majority of society just sees a shiny toy and covets it.
YUP yup yup.
I close all apps when I am done. It goes back for decades as correct computer habits. Appls wants your battery to die to sell you a new phone.
Why an Apple executive would even waste his breath telling people not to force-close apps is beyond me.
A user emailed Tim Cook with the question, who forwarded it to Federighi for a response.
#DeleteChrome
Horsesh*t. Or rather, Stalman Foot-cheese.
Stalman was talking about software. You' can change your system image on your phone. You can even make one yourself if you want to. You can make your own apps that work the way you want. And for those who aren't so fanatical, they're free to stick with stock system images that come with that all-important support (even if it's less than 2 years in most cases - it's not like it stops working after support ends).
If everyone did it Stalman's way, small cheap and smart smartphones wouldn't exist. "Everything should be open" - well, no manufacturer is going to put the big bucks into r & d making a product that anyone else can just legally knock off. Thus there would be no economies of scale, and too many hardware and software incompatibilities.
Them's the facts. Or do you want to go back to the time of home-brew computers, and a slew of different architectures and operating systems with software only available on any one particular system in a hit or miss fashion? It was fun, but it was also a bit of a PITA.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
In the years of yore, if you buy IBM you wouldn't get fired. It might even got you promoted
No matter how clunky, how useless, how bloated IBM's products were, many people (then) somehow equate IBM to 'excellence'
Same line of thinking is happening with brand names such as Facebook / Tweeter / Google
People can't seem to realize that they are continually duping themselves because of a certain 'brand names'
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
I get "normal" battery usage out of my iPhone 4S, which is to say maybe a day if I happen to browse the web a bit, Facebook a bit, make a few calls. 2-3 days on very light usage. But on a recent trip to the US, where I had no cell service, my battery life utterly tanked. I could feel it getting hot in my pocket. My guess was that it was constantly searching for a cell signal it could use, and had ramped up the TX power to max to try and get one. When I twigged and turned off the cellphone feature, battery life returned to normal.
This suggests that if you are in a marginal signal area, your battery could be getting hammered because the phone tries harder to maintain a connection.
Oh, that and the usual suspects - the Facebook app is terrible.
AFAIK iOS has a per App option to allow the App to access location always, never, or if the App is running. In the latter case quitting the App saves battery power if it is the only App using location because the phone no longer tries to determine it's location. Now, I could be wrong and this could be new information, maybe the phone always knows it's location and it is only passed to the App if the correct setting is selected. My own experience though is that setting Apps to only use location if running and quitting those apps does save power.
First off, these gadgets are not telephones, they are computers: Computers you are not permitted to control. Making it impossible to understand anything that is going on, is part of the toy interface designed to prevent you from even attempting to be anything but a pawn, a slave to this Telescreen, this panopticon, this Simon Legree in a pretty, slick case. Why would anyone want such a gadget, much less pay for one?
Because it does what they want and need it to do in a simple and straight-forward way.
Because they are not system-level programmers or hardware-oriented technical hobbyists. They might be very proficient in creating and editing documents in Office 365 or Google Docs --- and then relaxing by playing a few rounds of Solitairde, watching a movie on Netflix, or reading an e-book from Kindle,
In the meanwhile they enjoy their lunch looking at the 'Fail Harder' poster on the wall that is next to the Zuckerberg portrait.
Them's the facts. Or do you want to go back to the time of home-brew computers, and a slew of different architectures and operating systems with software only available on any one particular system in a hit or miss fashion? It was fun, but it was also a bit of a PITA.
In a word, yes.
Or do you want to go back to the time of home-brew computers, and a slew of different architectures and operating systems with software only available on any one particular system in a hit or miss fashion?
Kind of... Sort of... Maybe? It had its charms, as you mentioned. I'd not want to drag everyone back there with me and I think that's the difference.
What's amusing is that was back when, RMS was really peeved about them putting passwords on the systems at MIT. (This is why he's against DRM.) He went on a crusade to get the users to leave the password field blank or to use the same passwords. Today, we've got all these people who rail against DRM and echo his sentiments - and none of them give me their passwords.
Don't get me wrong, RMS serves a very valuable function and I'm glad he exists. If there's one thing he is, it is pretty damned consistent. Well... Sort of... There are times and places where he has to cheat and have someone else do things that he himself will not do. You could say that's hypocritical of him and I'd be hard pressed to argue against it - but I'd say he's generally doing a pretty decent job at being his version of virtuous. Well, as you probably know, I'm a rather pragmatic person. ;-)
I'm grateful for him. I have donated to the FSF but it's not that often that I do. I'm sure he's okay with it - I much prefer to donate to EFF and the ACLU. I'm not much for zealots even though I believe they help counter the zealots in the either direction.
It's easy to point out how the world might look if RMS had his way. However, can you imagine how the world would look had he not been on his crusade? I don't know what it would look like and I'm not about to pretend I do. I do suspect that it would be quite different than it is, had he not existed. Someone, however crazy, has to balance out the crazies on the other side. He's helped do that.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
Stalman Foot-cheese.
Fuck off. You lost. There was no need for that, and the rest of your post suddenly became utterly non-interesting.
The reason task killers can decrease battery life on Android is that when an app subscribed to an event and isn't running, it is started. So the task killer may cause the app to be regularly restarted instead of just staying in memory.
Task killers only help with buggy apps that can sometimes go crazy instead of properly getting into standby.
Some task killers are a bit better and can prevent apps from restarting. These can really improve your battery life, in exchange, you usually lose all background features from the app (notifications, sync, ...)
Putting a press release full with absolute correct stuff while at the same time "forgetting" to address the actual issue -- like the programs that do not "run for a short period of time before they're set to a suspended state", but always keep running and therefore are a problem in several ways -- is a time-honored method to throw sand in peoples eyes.
As for the TFA's subject line ? Its a blatant lie-by-omission.
There, fixed it for them.
People double tap on the home button and see this massive list of apps stretching back to the dawn of time and what are they supposed to think?
No-one is going to switch between their current app and one twenty deep in a list like this. It's far quicker to just go and relaunch the app.
I'm not surprised that people think that they need to "kill off" the items on the list. Apple could solve this problem by rethinking the UX - one such solution would be to limit the items on the list and make clear which ones are actually still running in the background vs those which are just a history item.
Avantslash - View Slashdot cleanly on your mobile phone.
I second this
Still makes the UI cluttered. If I do it the apple way I have to wade thru a bunch a stuff that hasn't been used in a long while to get to the one I want. Please give us a close all.
Wrong, they are caching junk to speed up loading the most recent apps. True, just like android, the os cycles stuff into the background pretty efficiently, it leaves junk in the cache. The ones in "suspended" mode are indeed using resources, just not enough to actually affect battery life in any noticeable way. The cache, on the otherhand, can get out of hand.
How are they suspended, but not using system resources?
It was all more fun back then because everything was NEW. It was AWESOME. Today ... meh.
But to your point about what the world would look like without Stalman ...
[rant]
1. No GPL. So Linus would have released his software under his original license, which was free for home users, paid for commercial users.
2. No GPL hassles. Anyone who wanted truly free software would build upon the *BSDs.
3. Given a choice between (1) and (2), businesses would all have opted for (2), because they can actually build upon it to make products users will pay for, like Apple (OSX) and Sony (Playstation 3/4) do.
4. Anyone else could also build upon the *BSDs, and either release the source or sell the combined software, or whatever combo they wished to do.
The printer driver problem that Stalman ran into was not really all that big a deal. Someone gives you state of the art equipment to play around with (a cutting-edge laser printer) and they would naturally expect that if there were problems, you would tell them, they would fix them, and improve their product. No just give you and everyone else the source code to that other companies can use it without any sweat equity.
Stalman's snit shows just how juvenile his thinking really is. He took personal offense because they exercised their freedom to not give the source. He doesn't want freedom - he wants control under his terms. F*ck you, Stalman.
The same people who decry closed software don't object to closed software for games, or for making closed software when they can make a buck out of it (apps apps apps). Stalman thinks everyone should live like he did, living in his university office, because making profit from working on/selling proprietary software is somehow evil ...
Until around 1998, my office at MIT was also my residence. I was even registered to vote from there.
and
I was just kind of curious. I can be "strange/non-conformist". I don't do deodorant. Don't do telephones (e.g. i rarely carry my cellphone and only use my landline for recruiters to spam my phone). I tried natural toothpaste because I don't like the effects of fluoride.
I don't feel so bad. Richard Stallman doesn't look like he bathes, shaves, plus he lived out of the MIT lab. Some people are stranger than me.
Bot Berlin
July 15th, 2008 2:28pm
Yes, and Charles Manson kills people -- that doesn't mean we want to compare ourselves to him.
SaveTheHubble
July 15th, 2008 2:29pm
The guy is an asshole. Remember when he wrote this:
As Chicago Mayor Harold Washington said of the corrupt former Mayor Daley, "I'm not glad he's dead, but I'm glad he's gone." Nobody deserves to have to die - not Jobs, not Mr. Bill, not even people guilty of bigger evils than theirs. But we all deserve the end of Jobs' malign influence on people's computing.
s/Jobs/Richard Stalman/g
The GPL actually helps companies like Microsoft maintain their preeminent position because you can't make any real money selling GPL software, so development lags, there's no promotional budget, manufacturers don't care if your software runs on their devices or not. So guess who gets market and mindshare, even for open source software? It's why the free screen readers on Linux are crap compared to this free windows one. It's why decent text-to-speech and speech-to-text on Android actually works - Google is making their profit by getting their apps in front of everyone. If they had tried to sell android, they would have been up against the entrenched players - sun, microsoft, nokia, rim
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
I know for a fact that this is wrong. I have a few exercise apps that I use at night. If I forget to manually shut them down, I find my iPhone is dead or nearly dead when I wake up in the morning.
Also, when I first had my iPhone, I started opening all the apps to see what they do. I had no idea that they were still in the background. After a few days, I wondered why my battery was draining so quickly, to the point that I thought there might be something wrong with my iPhone. Then I discovered how to view and shut down the apps in the background. Every single app I had ever opened was still sitting there open. Oops...
Very much this.
If I don't manually close the Camera app [running in the background] on the iPhone, the phone's battery life decreases by nearly 1/3. And if Safari is running in the background with more than a few javascript-heavy pages open, the battery indicator behaves more like a countdown timer.
Never trust an app to manage itself. Manually shut down anything you don't want running.