How to Prolong Your Cellphone’s Battery (Hint: You Don’t Need to Close Your Apps)

— -- You are so disciplined about closing apps on your cellphone to preserve battery life, but now, a shocker.

According to the Apple blog 9to5Mac, an iPhone user emailed Apple CEO Tim Cook a question that's top of mind for many iPhone users: “Do you quit your iOS multitasking apps frequently and is this necessary for battery life? Just wanting you to put this controversy to rest.”

While Cook didn’t respond, the head of Apple’s IOS team, Craig Federighi, gave a definitive answer in the reply: “No and No.”

What? Closing apps is religion for those of us who worship at the altar of battery preservation. While Apple would neither confirm nor deny Federighi’s email exchange, it did point to an Apple support page that outlines why apps running in the background don’t consume resources.

“After you switch to a different app, some apps run for a short period of time before they're set to a suspended state," the website states. "Apps that are in a suspended state aren’t actively in use, open, or taking up system resources."

When you double-click the home button on your phone, you see a cascade of apps, and while this makes you think they are fully active back in that stack, apparently they freeze shortly after you switch into a different app. I like to think of it as your apps being frozen in carbonite like Han Solo was when Jabba had him. In that frozen state, they are not consuming power. Controversy resolved.

But what about Android? Dave Burke, a vice president of engineering at Android, echoes Apple's comments.

“There's this big myth on phones that we have to swipe away your applications to save battery," he said. "It's just completely not true."