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CompTIA A+ Certification All-in-One Exam Guide

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All of the mobile operating systems provide at least one way to close running

applications—the most common is to swipe the app in a particular direction

from the device’s list of recent apps. If you come at this with a traditional

mindset shaped by how desktop operating systems work, there’s a chance

you’ll misunderstand when and why we close mobile apps, so let’s consider a

much-simplified version of what goes on under the hood.

On a traditional computer, you open an application when you need it, and

it will run until it completes its work, crashes, or you close it. Because mobile

devices have more limited computing resources and battery power, you don’t

want open applications eating up big chunks of resources and burning power

while they aren’t in focus or the device isn’t even being used. To address this

problem, modern mobile OS versions manage running apps to optimize

performance and battery life.

The catch is that the way they manage apps makes the term “running” a

little slippery. While your current app may be running in the traditional sense,

the various processes that power your recent out-of-focus apps may keep

running if they have work to do, be cached until you return to the app, or get

killed if the OS needs its resources for other apps. For the most part the OS

will do a good job of managing well-designed apps, but you may still need to

close an app if it has frozen, begins to malfunction, or you suspect it is

causing the device to misbehave.

NOTE When closing an app, keep in mind that the user may lose unsaved

data when you close it, and (depending on the app) that their device may lose

certain functionality they expect it to have until the app is restarted.

Some apps may (intentionally or accidentally) leave background processes

running even after the GUI has closed. In Android, the Application Manager

will let you force stop an app, also killing its background processes (Figure

25-1). You can likewise control background tasks in Windows Phone through

application or battery settings. In iOS, a swipe will generally do the job.

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