Should You Always Close all Background Apps?

There is a misconception among most of the smartphone users that closing the background applications is a healthy practice for their phone.

Whether you are an iPhone user or an Android user most of you always tend to close the application from the background as soon as you leave it. If you are one of them, then you are doing nothing good for your phone. However, for Windows PC users, the thing is different. We will talk about that later on.

Well, it is nothing but a big myth that closing the background applications will reduce battery consumption and hence enhance its life. In fact, it does the opposite of that.

The reason this myth is so widely spread because the users usually get confused between ‘Background‘ and ‘Active‘ states of the application. To make things clear we will first discuss the states of an iOS or an Android application.

An Android or an iOS application basically goes through 5 states:

1. Not Running/Closed State – The application has not been launched by you.
2. Active State – The application has been launched and is on the screen, being used by you.
3. Inactive State – The application is still launched and, on the screen, but you are not using it.
4. Background State – The application is not on your screen but is still working in the background. Email or message service applications are an example of it.
5. Suspended State – In this state, the application lies in the background doing absolutely nothing. It just uses the RAM to sit idle.

So, whenever you minimize any application in your mobile devices, you actually put them in the Background State or the Suspended State.

Whenever any application is in Background State it uses minimal battery and reduces itself to only conduct background activities like playing audio, uploading a file, location tracking, looking for a new message.

On the other hand, when an application is in a Suspended state, it doesn’t use any battery. It just uses RAM to keep itself away from Not Running State.

You have to keep in mind that your phone is “Smart”. The memory management algorithm of Android works very effectively on deciding which app needs to be closed and which can be allowed to run in the background.

Closing any application will force some resources to work for removing that application from the RAM. That will cost some battery consumption. Afterward, if you re-launch that application, again resources will have to work to fit it into the RAM. This process will again cost you some battery consumption. It will also make your phone slower.

So, it is better to keep applications in Suspended State rather than Closed State. For enhancing your phone’s battery life, you can follow other options such as:

• Reduce the brightness of the phone
• Turn off the notifications of not important applications
• Turn off the vibrations for calls and notifications
• Turn off the Geo Positioning Service, when not used by any application
• Minimize the data usage

Effect of Background Applications on Windows PC

When we talk about Windows Operating Systems on your PCs, the picture is different. Windows application doesn’t go to the Suspended State as the mobile applications do. They keep on running in the background by using the system resources.

So, when any other application is launched and needs to use the same resource, that resource is assigned on a priority basis. If not worked upon, this can make your system slow, and eventually break.

So, it becomes very important to close the background applications in the Windows system, especially on low-end devices. So that resources can be allocated to the new applications as soon as they are launched.

Several methods can be followed to close down the background applications in Windows.

• Restarting the system is the quickest method
• Open the Task Manager of the system by pressing Ctrl+Alt+Delete button together. In the task manager, you will find various tasks and processes. Select those whom you want to close and click on End Task or End Process as applicable. Do not close System or EXPLORER.EXE.
• Go to the Command Prompt. Once there, enter this line taskkill /f /fi “status eq not responding” and then press Enter Key. This command should end all processes that are unresponsive.
• Use third part optimization applications. There are many cleaning apps available for Windows that can kill the unresponsive apps and make your PC run faster

Conclusion

We hope any misconception regarding the closing of applications is cleared. Now get over your habit of clearing the apps from your phone’s background and let your phone handle your burden.