Does multitasking use battery?

It will use some memory, but apple's way of multitasking is designed to get the best battery usage possible. This is done by taking a "screen shot" of the app to remember your position. It is not true multitasking, but it will allow you to jump back and forth between apps and allow certain apps to play music and run other services that are essential to the function of the app.

 

No it won't. I close the apps in my multitasking bar about every week. They stop running after about 15 minutes (Or 10 I can't remember.) I've had no performance differences.

 

will it us more battery yes of course. It is that much no it is not. I will say at being generous I will say it will suck down 1-2% at most of your battery assuming you never turn on your screen or use the cell network.

I said 1-2% so I could have a very huge gross margin of error Chances are it will be under 1%. Why go threw so much trouble to get extra battery life that would be rated in minutes when there are far easier way to save battery life like dim your screen which get a much better return on your effort. Hell killing the task might cost you more battery life due to the extra time the screen has to be on to do it.

 

It won't use so much battery that you'd actually notice the difference. Don't worry about it. The only time that will happen is if an app doesn't sleep correctly and you have to kill it off in the multitasking bar. That's rare though.

 

if apple fan boys dont get intense, I want to say multitasking on iphone is more of a advertising thing than a real "multitasking" concept. it is only the way to show your recently used apps so it doesnt use more battery.

 

I don't understand why people hate on iOS multitasking so much. It's a phone, not a computer. Sure, it'd be nice if it constantly kept everything running (I guess?), but for a cell phone, iOS multitasking is a much wiser method, at least at this stage in the game. Perhaps when phones have mini nuclear reactors built into them and octo-core processors we can talk about "real" multitasking, but why? It's a phone! A device for on the go, for short bursts of use. It's not a computer replacement.

Why would I want Angry Birds to continue running in the background and eating up battery whilst I look something up, answering a text, or I don't know, actually using the phone as a phone.

People moan and complain that battery life sucks, but then they demand "real" multitasking. I can't facepalm enough over this.

 

when a lot of apps are suspended in ram, sometimes my iPhone 4 becomes sluggish, but not so much. i always make the habti on closing apps i don't use anymore especially games. i installed springtomize (jailbroken) and put the tweak that when u open the multitasking bar, it always shows the close button, so it's easier to close apps without the need to hold on the icon first.

and by closing unused apps especially 3D games like N.O.V.A, i can use more tabs in safari without safari needing to reload the page when u switch tabs.

if u r jailbroken, install springtomize, it's worth it, and you can make the apps icon that is not suspended in the ram dimmed too, so it's easier to see which apps are in the ram and which apps are not.

 

It may not be "real multitasking", but I don't see why thats a bad thing.
Nearly anything you could ever want to do with multitasking is possible through the iOS API's. There are only a couple of things that are not possible, and even those could be done without "real multitasking" if apple added a couple more options with their multitasking API's.

Think about it for a minute. How do you use your device. Most people just hop between different apps. For that, saving the state to RAM is fine.

 

it does but not much.

 

The only time I notice a big whack on the battery life is when I leave maps open int he background.

 

And Skype, that drains the battery. Because it is VOIP it keeps running in the background. It doesn't use push notifications for calls/texts like other apps.

 

The apps you see after the double tap may or may not be doing anything. They may or may not be in memory. Unfortunately there is no way to tell.

Apple's position is that you don't need to care, and to a large degree, that's true. A typical app, when it goes into the background, will suspend, but stay in ram. If another app needs that memory, the OS will do what it needs to (including removing the previous app from memory) to get it.

Apps can run if they are intended for background use (voip, audio, location). There is an icon in the status bar that indicates that some app is using this service (and therefore memory and cpu time). Apps can also run for a while to do dedicated background tasks, such as finishing an upload--there is, as far as I know, no way to see this in the UI.

Oh great, another "real multitasking" troll.

 

My only issue I wish the Apple Remote app would stay connected to my wifi while "running in the background". I hate it when I open it for my Apple TV it has to find the network 1st all the time.