All it took was an email for one of the most popular methods of saving battery power on the iPhone to run out of juice.
Double tapping the home button on iOS devices to shut down multitasking apps running in the background does not save energy, the company's senior vice-president Craig Federighi said.
His comments came in an email exchange with an iPhone user in the US, who had written to Apple chief executive Tim Cook asking if the method was necessary for battery life and whether the company's bosses use it.
The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.
SUBSCRIBE & SAVE
Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
Join more than 350,000 subscribers and keep yourself informed with a selection of The Week’s most interesting, enlightening and entertaining stories - plus daily puzzles.
Join more than 350,000 subscribers and keep yourself informed with a selection of The Week’s most interesting, enlightening and entertaining stories - plus daily puzzles.
Latest Videos FromThe Week
"No and no," replied Federighi, before thanking the email-writer for being an Apple customer.
The emails were initially shared by the sender with 9 to 5 Mac, who point out that Apple executives respond personally to small questions and queries from customers every now and then, with equally "short and succinct" answers – such as an exchange Cook had with an Italian customer.
The website adds that the pointlessness of quitting apps might have been staring us in the face this whole time, too, as the laborious process of swiping every individual window to close it means it's "clearly not supposed to be a thing".
It adds: "On a technical level, most of the apps are either frozen in RAM or not running at all, the system just displays them as a history for consistency. This is why the battery life impact is negligible."
However, the method is valid on rival devices such as Nokia Lumia phones and Samsung phones have a Smart Manager app for handling numerous running programs, points out the BBC.
So what are the best ways to save precious iPhone battery power? According to The Guardian, the screen is the biggest drain so turning the brightness down will help. Push notifications and the aptly named "low power mode" are also good places to start.
The paper also recommends wearing a watch to avoid turning the display on and off to check the time, something you may do around 100 times a day, according to research.
