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Any application that has memory leaks whether active or passive using location services and other system wide services w/o the need of your direct interaction drains the life of the battery charge, period. Craig didn't address any of this in his email and as a former colleague of his I'd love to debate Thermodynamics with him, seeing as he has no background in it.

The debate should begin with respect to the obsession with thin and the fact the battery capacities in iOS devices aren't extending themselves in any impressive ways. They've targeted an 8-9 hour single charge window and expect people [studies proving peaks of use per day drop well before this length] to recharge after.

If they produced a battery of 12 hours it would be impressive, but it wouldn't stop the people who want more from complaining ad nauseum. It's a move the goal post fruitless obsession.

However, so is the obsession with thin. Form factors are done. The system has reached a zenith in design and now it's about incremental refinements from here on out. It's now all about internals.

He assumed normal operating conditions and under such it makes no difference for battery life to kill apps. If some app or apps have leaks or what not you will notice very fast.
 
I beg to differ. I close my apps nearly every time i lock my 4S and hardly ever do i get slowdowns (more than the normals for a 4S on iOS 9) and in the event my phone does slow to a crawl, i just clear the ram and it's back to normal.

In all honesty, my 4S runs iOS 9 pretty well. Battery isnt the best, but i make do. My charging case also comes in handy. ;)
That's certainly your subjective impression, but the truth is your 4S is much faster, smarter and more adept at managing its system resources than you or I or anyone else might be.
 
Hmm. Ket me quote from the site MacRumors (you may have heard of it...)
"Second, the app was using silent audio to keep FlexBright running in the background, a frowned-upon tactic that can result in battery drain. Late last year, the Facebook app for iOS was using excessive battery life, something caused in part by a silent audio component."
https://www.macrumors.com/2016/03/09/apps-adjusting-display-temperature-not-allowed/

Every API can be abused...

Well, considering I explicitly said that silent audio was capable of keeping applications open and I explicitly said that VoIP can not without some remote entity working for it, it sounds as though I am correct. Look at the post I am referring to - I never even implied that it was impossible to any abuse background APIs, but I said it is impossible to keep an application open by just subscribing to VoIP background protocol, which it is (quoting this thing called documentation):

Rather than keep VoIP apps awake all the time, the system allows them to be suspended and provides facilities for monitoring their sockets for them. When incoming traffic is detected, the system wakes up the VoIP app and returns control of its sockets to it.
 
In my experience quitting apps that are running in the backdrop absolutely improves battery life...

I agree - especially the camera app.
On all of my phones, regardless of OS version, I find that keeping the camera in the background is a huge drain on the battery.
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Great! Now, how do I get the Podcast app NOT to quit even though it's in the foreground and in use?!?

That's not a bug - it's a feature to prevent the battery drain....
 
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I agree - especially the camera app.
On all of my phones, regardless of OS version, I find that keeping the camera in the background is a huge drain on the battery.
[doublepost=1457639379][/doublepost]

That's not a bug - it's a feature to prevent the battery drain....
Something doesn't seem right about that as I've certainly had camera in the background many times and it hasn't had any noticeable effect on battery life.
 
I agree - especially the camera app.
On all of my phones, regardless of OS version, I find that keeping the camera in the background is a huge drain on the battery.
[doublepost=1457639379][/doublepost]

That's not a bug - it's a feature to prevent the battery drain....

Yeah ever since they included "location" based photo tagging, the camera app has been destroying battery in background. It can be turned off of course, but I auto close that upon not using now.
 
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So why do my battery statistics show background activity draining battery when I'm not quitting, and not showing it when I am?
That is for apps that can do things in the background for longer periods of time. There aren't many of those, but some are certainly there. In general most apps won't really have much background activity if any at all, but a few can if they do something that has exceptions for that (like background audio, VoIP, and navigation, for example).

Basically the more complete answer to the question that was asked, as has been pointed out in some replies before, is that for the most part it doesn't do much for the battery to close most apps (and can sometimes even use more battery even if those apps are frequently used and get launched a lot after being closed each time), but for a few that can continue running in the background, it can stop them from running and thus using some battery power if you close them, assuming you aren't using them at the time.

Furthermore, Background App Refresh is just one aspect that relates to apps being able to run in the background, but the underlying ability for them to do so is separate from that and has been part of iOS for quite a while without any user-facing controls for it, which is why various apps can run in the background unrelated to Background App Refresh.
 
Better answer would be: No and no, unless the app you are closing is Facebook.

Killing facebook is the only known way how to avoid it sucking battery in the background. (turning off background refresh won't help)
A better solution is ..... wait for it ....... Don't use Facebook on a phone?
it's horrible on Android also.

Let the OS do it's thing.
iOS is a variant of UNIX BSD.
Android is Linux.
Both do a real good job of memory management.
 
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Same thing here - i've argued with Apple Store employees about this before.
Just goes to show how pervasive this myth is. Once an idea is implanted in someone's mind as the truth, it's hard to shake it out because they're convinced it's true and they are right to think the truth.
 
Neither my iPhone 6s or my iPad Pro will show me battery usage anymore. It just tells me it will do so after using the device for a few minutes. BS. It NEVER shows battery usage. Why??

Agreed. Why would anyone ever do that?

Because it's ridiculous to scroll through every app you've ever opened when going to a task switcher. As noted by another commentator, the design of the app switching is self-defeating.

Does anyone at MacRumors actually use Apple products or know anything about them? Force Quitting is a very specific function in OS X for quitting an app that has frozen, crashed, or is otherwise unresponsive. This article, conversely, is about simply quitting an app in iOS instead of letting it stay open in the background.

Using "Force Quit" in this context makes no sense.

Thank you!! This terminology usage bugs the crap out of me and people just don't care to be accurate.

What a bunch of horse poop about the memory usage.

On my iPhone 6 Plus, there are times where I'm jumping between 2 tabs in safari and every time I switch tabs the tab will refresh.

When I close all other apps in my app switcher, guess what, the tabs in safari don't refresh anymore when switching back and forth.

Same experiences here.
 
RAM.
Apps do not auto-close.
They stop accessing.
Closing apps is still required when RAM is full.
If one does not clear RAM and keep looping preferred app function, battery will be consumed.

Simple logic.
Close as required when your preferred app is not doing what it's supposed to do like refresh and display new content.

Learn which apps are RAM hungry, and how much RAM your device has.

If programmers aren't efficient, neither is the performance of your device when used together.
 
Haha, this is one of the great urban myths of our generation. People think that leaving apps open hogs your RAM and such. But they're not totally incorrect. As others have pointed out, some apps have ways of staying open and wasting some battery. I kill third-party apps all the time just because it can't hurt and could help. This is especially the case with Facebook, Messenger, and navigation apps.
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RAM.
Apps do not auto-close.
They stop accessing.
Closing apps is still required when RAM is full.
If one does not clear RAM and keep looping preferred app function, battery will be consumed.

Simple logic.
Close as required when your preferred app is not doing what it's supposed to do like refresh and display new content.

Learn which apps are RAM hungry, and how much RAM your device has.

If programmers aren't efficient, neither is the performance of your device when used together.
iOS automatically closes RAM-hungry apps when they're in the background if you are low on RAM.
[doublepost=1457642973][/doublepost]
A better solution is ..... wait for it ....... Don't use Facebook on a phone?
it's horrible on Android also.

Let the OS do it's thing.
iOS is a variant of UNIX BSD.
Android is Linux.
Both do a real good job of memory management.
BSD and Linux don't go around closing things for you. Even OS X doesn't. You can easily slow your system to a crawl by leaving tons of stuff open. iOS has special features. IDK about Android 'cause I never use it.

In fact, El Capitan's kernel task seems to leak memory now, so it'll slow to a crawl regardless unless I restart once a week. El Capitan is such a PoS.
 
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When running a navigation app, such as Navigon, Garmin USA, Maps, etc., the location icon at the top of the screen stays there until you force quit the app. I believe location tracking consumes battery life like crazy, so I swipe these apps off when finished.
 
That is for apps that can do things in the background for longer periods of time. There aren't many of those, but some are certainly there. In general most apps won't really have much background activity if any at all, but a few can if they do something that has exceptions for that (like background audio, VoIP, and navigation, for example).

Basically the more complete answer to the question that was asked, as has been pointed out in some replies before, is that for the most part it doesn't do much for the battery to close most apps (and can sometimes even use more battery even if those apps are frequently used and get launched a lot after being closed each time), but for a few that can continue running in the background, it can stop them from running and thus using some battery power if you close them, assuming you aren't using them at the time.

Furthermore, Background App Refresh is just one aspect that relates to apps being able to run in the background, but the underlying ability for them to do so is separate from that and has been part of iOS for quite a while without any user-facing controls for it, which is why various apps can run in the background unrelated to Background App Refresh.

This answer may be misleading. It should understood that if an app includes background processes (on the limited basis allowed by Apple), then those processes are going to run because the app is installed on the device. Unless the app supplies the option for the user to disable a background process, it will run all the time, not just when the app's suspended state is currently listed in the app switcher. Some processes are allowed to continue for a short time after the app is sent to the background before suspending, but again, this is designed to allow the user to juggle apps without lagging, so defeating that feature of iOS by swiping out the saved states isn't likely to produce any user benefit. It will successfully waste your time, however.
 
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Please let me know how accurate you think that thought is. I guarantee my Note 5 is every bit as secure as my 6S+.
I don't know the security details of Android, but I have doubts. iPhones use hardware-specific methods to encrypt data, something you may have heard about from these articles about the FBI. Unless Samsung is doing something special now, last I heard, Android didn't have this kind of security.
 
When running a navigation app, such as Navigon, Garmin USA, Maps, etc., the location icon at the top of the screen stays there until you force quit the app. I believe location tracking consumes battery life like crazy, so I swipe these apps off when finished.

This happens only when you you've asked for directions and don't close the trip at the end (which Maps for one is not very good about doing on its own). Ironically it is faster to end a trip in Maps by deleting the saved state in the app picker than to tap around for the right place to do it in the Maps app.
 
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