Barb Gibson's World

Two weeks ago, I was planning to buy a new iPhone battery, because I thought mine was nearly shot.  It only seemed to be holding a charge for a few hours, even with only light use.  Luckily, because of a trip, I didn’t have time to deal with it at the time.  But throughout my trip, I had to charge the phone at least twice a day.  Then, while killing time waiting for my niece’s wedding to begin, I mentioned the problem to my sister’s friend, Tim, and he replied by asking “How many apps do you have open?” 

“Open?” I asked, “um, what do you mean?”

He took my phone and proceeded to close down all the currently open apps that were sucking up my battery (while gleefully counting them, there were 54, by the way).  That was it, instantly my battery was “fixed” and is now performing as it did when the phone was new (18 months ago).  I felt pretty stupid, but I’m betting I’m not the only one that missed this when the new OS rolled out last year that added the multi-tasking feature.  See, I knew about multi-tasking, but just didn’t realize all those apps were staying open and draining the battery.

So in case anyone else needs to know this, here’s how to close apps not in use:

Double-click the Home button (the same way you would to access the multi-tasking feature).  The apps that appear at the bottom of the screen are all open.  If you scroll them to the side, you’ll see every open app.  Press and hold any of the icons, which will make a little red circle with a minus sign appear in the upper left corner of each icon, and they begin to wiggle.

Now all you have to do is touch the minus sign to close any app you don’t need to keep open (don’t worry, it won’t delete the app, just close it).

That’s it.  Thanks, Tim, for saving me the cost of a new battery!