iPhone Tip – Free up memory and conserve battery life

A feature that has been asked for by many of Apple’s iPhone customers is multitasking.  Apple gave it to us with the release of iOS 4. They have done a great job of implementing it.  I’ve been using it on my iPhone 4, and I love it.  It’s great that I can switch between applications seamlessly.  Just press twice on the home button, and voilà, I can see all my running applications.

Multitasking has an imminent downside as you already know.  When you have too many background processes running, your iPhone will tend to be sluggish, plus it will take a toll on the battery.  These two factors will affect the iPhone 3GS more than the iPhone 4; however, there is a simple way to close these running applications.  You will free up memory, and save on battery life.

Follow these few simple steps:

  • Press twice on the Home button to reveal your running applications
  • Now swipe your finger on the row of applications from right to left to get to the end of the open applications.
  • Press and hold on the icon.  The icons will begin to jiggle, and they will have a red circle with a minus in the top left corner of the icon.
  • Press the red circle with the minus until all the applications are gone.

That’s it!  Now you have freed up memory on your iPhone as well as conserved the battery life.  You can check in from time to time and perform the above steps if you notice that your iPhone is becoming sluggish.  If all else fails, you can always reboot your iPhone to give it a new spring in its step.

Photo Credit: iPhone Multitarea Multitasking

I'm a husband, dad of two great kids, and I have a passion for Apple products. I got my first Mac in 2005, and I haven't looked back. I like the simplicity of the Mac, and how does the motto… Full Bio