Let's regroup for just a moment. LadtTxn's original question was "Is there an app that turns off apps running in the background?" She asked about an iPhone 5 and I realize I "only" have an iPhone 4. I would assume that her question concerned battery life... That's how I got here.
Some of you have said, "The vast majority of apps cannot and do not run in the background", "No, there is no such app nor need of one", "Well, you can't and you don't need to on iOS", and then snozdop shouts out" iOS APPS DO NOT RUN CONTINUOUSLY IN THE BACKGROUND!!!" Multi-Tasking, drivers and other things, that in my opinion, really have nothing to do with the original question, are also brought up. Even jamesdaddio says, "have you ever found your battery almnost dead due to mapquest or safari running all night..." So I would assume (you know what that gets me) that the question is about battery life...
Well, I did the "tweak" that I found on TheiPhoneMom's website, which I posted before.
- Tap the home button twice.
- At the bottom of the screen you’ll see a row app icons. These are the apps that are running. Slide your finger to move forward or backward through the apps. Chances are you’ll have more than the four that first show up.
- Touch one of the app icon’s and hold your finger on it until they all start wiggling. A small red circle will appear at the top left of the icon.
- Tap on the red circle and the app icon will disappear. The app is now no longer running in the background.
- When you’re done shutting things down tap the home button and the apps will stop wiggling.
- Tap the home button again to return to your home screen.
- These steps will work even if you are currently using an app. In other words, you don’t have to be on the home screen to bring up the row of running apps.
Meg St._Clair replied' "If you want to spend your time deleting apps from the Recents tray (which is what you're doing, not necessarily closing out running apps), it's your time to spend." Which relates to my "Windows based" mind as, "you can clear out you Recently Visited Documents but it will have no effect on the performance of your computer". Absolutely true! But clearing out the History, cache and Temp files on a Windows computer sure does!
Anyway, I did the "tweak" above Saturday morning. Monday night was my first "day" back at work. After eight and a half hours at work, my iPhone still had half reading on the battery meter! That was after seven and a half hours listening to internet music and an hour watching vids on YouTube at breaks and lunch. Normally, at about the six or six and a half hour mark, my battery was in the "red" and needed to be recharged.
So you can say what you want, but there IS a need to turn off all of the apps that run in the background and drain your battery power. Now all you "experts" can Myth Buster me and tell me I didn't do my test right, but if my battery last twice as long as it did before....
"who checks their double tap every 15 minutes.?" I might from now on....
And Meg, where is that "End" button to stop them from using up battery." (???) Still haven't found it.....
So called experts...
iPhone4user2014