Exiting an App

[APK]

What is the proper way to exit an App you are finished using it? Depress the "Home" button, back button until you are back to the home screen, both the same result. I want to be sure that I do not have apps running eating my battery when I have finished with them or go to a different app.

 

[Unibrow]

you can generally hit the home button, most apps will not consume battery in the background. Their are exceptions of course, for instance if you are currently signed into AIM and you hit the home button the app will not close as it's doing background stuff. Same goes for things like Pandora, if it's actively playing a song anyway. Generally you need not worry about apps consuming battery in the background. If an app goes rogue Android generally fixes the issue, although I like to use Watchdog Lite just to be sure.

If you're interested in how Android handles multi-tasking this article written by an Android dev is extremely useful.

Android Developers Blog: Multitasking the Android Way

another thing that you can do if you're concerned with battery drain is to check your "awake time." Menu>Settings>About Phone>Battery and you'll see uptime and awake time. Uptime is the time between restarts and awake time is time that the phone is spent being awake or the cpu being used. This will of course vary based on how you use your phone. If you don't use your phone and there's a lot of idle time (screen off, not playing music) then the awake time should be significantly less than your uptime. If your like me however, and play with your phone constantly then their won't be as much of a difference even though I'd say it's about 50% of my uptime. If your awake time is high then it's likely there is an app constantly refreshing Data or going rogue in the background.

*edit*
another thing you can do is download "Spare Parts" and check the partial wake usage. It will show you what apps are using the most power.

 

[EyeBaller]

It depends on the app. Some have menu-exit options, others just hit back instead of pressing home.

 

[sultan.of.swing]

I wished there was an "exit" option in the stock android browser.

Sent from my PC36100 using Tapatalk

 

[vel7wil]

I normally hit the back button all the way back to home screen...

 

[dan330]

both ways are fine...

back button till out.. is more sure way to close the app.
home button .. will most likely leave the app running in background.

either way is fine... BUT...
stop thinking about apps in background or not...
this is android, nothing like any other OS...
things in background have no effect on battery or performance (other than BAD apps).

best advise i can give you...
just use the phone.. forget about background crap.