Technofriends has a post on how to close background apps to save on battery usage. The tip is to show the background apps by pressing twice on the home button and then touching and holding on any of the apps shown. All the apps will start jiggling and show a red x in the top left corner. Press the x for the app you want to close. Note that if you do this without going into multitasking mode (by pressing home twice) you will delete the app from your IOS device.
This is an interesting tip but just how beneficial is it? Multitasking on IOS, in contrast to OSX, is already optimized for performance both in memory usage and battery use. For example, if other apps need memory, IOS automatically closes the app that has been the longest since it was last used. More research is needed on what the impacts are of leaving apps open in the background and letting IOS work automatically. Are there any real benefits of manually closing apps?
