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There are times when even tech experts are split on how to proceed when it comes to an iPhone best practice. The debate on whether you should close your apps out at the end of the day or not is still one topic that divides people in the know. It seems like a logical choice to close what you opened — it can only save battery power, right? But not so fast. This is the scary reason you should always close the apps on your iPhone every night, according to two tech experts. And then a counter argument by a third tech expert who says this advice is fast becoming outdated.
According to David Lynch, the Content Lead for Payette Forward, Inc., phone apps aren't perfect — they're prone to bugs and crashes. “If an app crashes in the background of your phone instead of being suspended, your phone battery can drain, or your phone could start to heat up,” Lynch says. “You can avoid these software issues by simply closing out of your apps at the end of the day.”
Paul Walsh, founder of refurbished tech retailer WeSellTek, agrees and explains that not closing apps can lead to overheating in the current temperatures.
"Reducing the number of apps running on your device, including in the background, is a quick way to reduce your phone’s energy consumption, and reducing its overall temperature,” Walsh says. "In most conditions, you can run as many apps as you want with very little risk of overheating. However, this all changes in extreme heat, which is why it’s so important to keep an eye on your phone’s performance."
So, what’s the caveat, you may be wondering? If you are enabling a setting that blocks all unknown callers and curbs spam, then it will also block people you may know who are calling from numbers that your device isn’t familiar with yet. “The downside to this is that you can’t get calls from unknown numbers that aren’t spam callers either, so if you want to receive those, it’s best to download an app that detects and blocks spam,” Wright says.
Instead, downloading an app like Robo Shield, RoboKiller, or Truecaller may be your best bet.
Chan says many phone users must have heard this before from many iPhone experts. “But the actual scenario is something different,” Chan explains. “The developer and Apple Watcher have recently stated that when an app is inactive, it becomes frozen and does not occupy much memory space, neither sucks the battery life. Therefore, inactive apps had nothing to do with the iPhone performance and its battery lifetime. The hidden truth is that the closing and opening of the applications uses a lot of resources in the iPhone.”
The good news is that forgetting to close your opened apps won’t wreak havoc on your device. But some tech experts still prefer to shut them out, especially in high temperatures, to prevent your phone from getting taxed.
