My mom is also deeply paranoid and superstitious about the phone. I'll be like "why don't you delete this second weather app you don't like that's sending you all these notifications you ignore?" And she'll be like "NO YOU'LL BREAK SOMETHING IT HAS TO TO BE LIKE THIS"
But at first they can't find it, then it doesn't play and then the phone doesn't automatically switch in horizontal view, but that's necessary, as they're convinced you can not possibly watch it otherwise. So the whole process takes about half an hour.
I think memory management on modern phones is good enough that running apps in the background is no longer an issue. Provided you're not using a piece of shit.
There is a difference between running in the background and being in memory.
Recent Apps may or may not be in memory, that's why when you switch to a "recent" app not used in a while it restarts anyway instead of continuing where you left it, it's effectively just a bookmark to a closed app. So the list being long doesn't mean these apps are using memory.
While running in the background is unrelated, apps can run in the background regardless if they are in the Recents list or not. And it can absolutely cause issues or excessive battery usage, but clearing the Recents list is not the solution.
I've trained everyone in my personal support range to restart their phones and tablets weekly. Flushes out all the apps and noticeably reduces complaints and questions from the users.
i mean from what people complain about it seems they simply don't determine what notifications are important, they just let everything bombard them at all times and whine that they get so many notifications as if it's just a fact of life..
I don't really believe anything my phone tells me about what apps are running. I think I'm quiting a music player and the interface disappears, but the music will keep playing. If it's slowing down, closing apps does nothing, but rebooting does.
Yeah, my parents actually close all their apps regularly, whereas I have dozens of apps not doing anything in the background since it doesn't really make a difference.
Tons of FOSS apps doing crucial stuff use tricks, like displaying a permanent notification (which you can then mute) to stay awake.
Also, you need to manually set the battery restriction to "unrestricted" for apps, by pretting on the text in the 2 battery options, and setting it away from "optimized".