Database Users

Does automatic email checking kill the battery

The reason I am asking is I am trying to track down a battery drain issue. The only thing I think can be causing it is the fact that I have my phone set to check 4 different email accounts every 5 mins.
I have a 3000mAh battery and I am able to kill it in 8hrs. I seem to remember someone talking about an app that could tell what apps or services were causing the most battery drain?
I am thinking about doing a test where I turn off automatic email checking and seeing if the battery lasts any longer. I use the phone for business as well as private use so I need to keep track of things when someone needs to get a hold of me. So I use email a great deal.

Ya.. that seems pretty fast.
I would also recommend checking the radio version that you have. Some people say that some radio versions kill the battery faster than others.
Check that out.

I have push mail set for one account (MS DirectPush with an Exchange server) with a 4/5 minute update interval, and I get acceptable battery life... It's not fantastic, but what do you expect for a PDA smartphone As soon as I fire up pRSSreader to check four RSS feeds (even if I set the interval to 3 hours!) my battery life REALLY suffers, and I'm in a 3G area - close to a mast, stationery - all day every day. The Palringo client REALLY kills the battery, we're talking about 3/4 hours to get to 10%.
SPB GPRS Monitor is useful for seeing if there's any data throughput going on, and the BatteryStatus Today plugin is also useful for seeing current battery drain in either mW or mA, so you can kinda figure out what's going on with your phone at the time (that and acbTaskManager to see if there's any processes maxing the device's CPU out, which has caused me battery drain in the past). I've got a HERM with v1.05.05.00 radio, for the record.

I've been having the same issue with my Vario II...
The battery life was relatively good when I didn't have my web'n'walk connection enabled. But now I have DirectPush enabled to check emails on an Exchange server set for 'as items arrive' aswell as another three POP email accounts.
The GPRS is almost always on and on full charge will only last me about 8-9 hours from 100% charge. If I'm out for a continous stretch for more than that time- I'm in trouble (as I was yesterday!)
I'm guessing this is normal behaviour then? Not too good if it is (!)

Well I went from 4 accounts every 5min down to 1 account every 5min and my battery life doubled. So yep constant email checking does kill the battery. Oh well, I have my important account set to check every 5min (may change it to 20mins) and my other accounts set to once a day, which I usually just check manually when I have a few min.

There seems to be many other threads on this issue and some say, even with multiple accounts setup, battery life is in the region of 20hrs. Changing to a different [radio] ROM seems like one of the solutions.

Sorry guys...I know I'm kinda late joining this discussion, but I thought I'd put in my two cents...
Checking your EMail in the fashion you described in your first post definitely drains your battery. I was in the same situation you're in: about 4 different accounts, set to update around 30 minutes or so...my phone was beeping "low battery" before the afternoon was over (and that was after being charged the previous night!)
Not only that, but I'm convinced that the "always-on" state that the radio was in from all that EMail-checking is what caused the radio to "burn out." I had to get a new 8525 after that happened.
Good luck with your situation. I'm looking for a solution myself.

Battery Life Solution

I am using the CDMA hero, but this should apply to anyone with a Hero (although our GSM friends have probably figured this out long ago.) Feel free to move my post if you like.
So I too was experiencing extreme battery draw down. I considered the SMS issue with perpetual awake times but after isolating the issue, I was still hitting 30% after after 12 hours with only moderate use. I found that unacceptable considering my Treo has been in standby for 2 weeks now and the battery has not budged. Solution? Turn of Google background services.
I know it hurts to have to manually refresh email, contacts, and calendar, but the return is almost zero battery drain (unless you are actively playing with the phone.) I know this is an obvious fix and I read it elsewhere online when I first got the phone. However, I am addicted to Gmail so I was really hesitant to turn it off. The background services option seems to keep a constant data connection when I really just want it to check my email every 15 minutes or so and update my calendar and contacts once a day. Has anyone found a way to limit the update frequency without the HTC widget. (I prefer the stock Android Gmail client.)

I do not know about the frequency of Gmail syncing,
but the main battery saving trick for me
is to turn the mobile data connection completelly off
when i know i will not (or want not) to be online
for a longer period of time (e.g. in the night, longer car drives, etc)
i am using the build-in htc widget for this

Thanks. That is a pretty good solution. Still wish I could curtail the sync frequency though......

So we need to re-enable it when we want to visit the Market, right? Annoying but if it improves battery life, then not a big deal.

Gmail sync schedule draining battery

Hi, sorry if this has been asked, but I'm a follower of the entire Nexus One forum, and could not find it.
It drive me nuts I cannot find how to set synchronization for the Gmail account. I want to have it check for mail every 15 or 30 minutes, and not continuously as how it looks is happening now. I think this is one of the reasons my battery drains so fast in standby.
Is this possible? ( I almost swear I saw it once, maybe at initial setup of the Nexus), or it's just my ex WinMo thinking?
Regards,
Alin.

As far as I know Gmail is push, no?

I need the answer too, but it seems that it is pushed mail.. it draws the battery quickly.

I leave my sync on and don't seem to have any significant battery life problems... I mostly leave my phone in 2g mode though, activating 3g/wifi when I actually want to do something.
I charge once a day when I am sleeping usually, but it seems fine to me.

Someone please correct me if Im wrong.
Im under the impression that Push email allows Gmail to stay completely idle until a wireless msg is sent and activates the updating process.
Thuse greatly reducing battery since it only has to check when told to instead of periodically.
Unless of course your constantly getting emails in which case it may be ALWAYS being told to check.

Guys, how long does the N1 need have to last. I life in an area where I can charge the N1 every night while I'm sleeping. It is set to Autosync with GMail and I use it quite a lot, maybe around 40-60 min. Internet and a few minutes phone and a few SMS and (at least now to get used to my new toy) a lot of playing around and about 30 min MP3 a day. It's empty when I go to bed but who cares? I got power beside my bed and do charge it while I sleep. That's how it should be, or? If I'm away and maybe don't have a power grid (where the heck is this today, in the middle of a dessert or rainforrest?!) and need more than a day than I would switch off the Internet and syncing and put down to display brightness.

sthoeft said:
Guys, how long does the N1 need have to last. I life in an area where I can charge the N1 every night while I'm sleeping. It is set to Autosync with GMail and I use it quite a lot, maybe around 40-60 min. Internet and a few minutes phone and a few SMS and (at least now to get used to my new toy) a lot of playing around and about 30 min MP3 a day. It's empty when I go to bed but who cares? I got power beside my bed and do charge it while I sleep. That's how it should be, or? If I'm away and maybe don't have a power grid (where the heck is this today, in the middle of a dessert or rainforrest?!) and need more than a day than I would switch off the Internet and syncing and put down to display brightness.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
The topic has less to do with how long the battery has to last and more about how do you change the GMail app to poll for new mail rather than relying on push. Mail sent to GMail account is by no means urgent and I for one don't want to drain my battery for a feature that I do not need.
For those that are skeptical that push technology drains the battery - the following is a quote from GMail's blog regarding the GMail app for WinMo (sorry I can't post the link due to user restriction): "Once you're set up, new messages are normally pushed to your phone within seconds. While this type of speed is pretty awesome, push connections tend to use more power than fetching at intervals, so don't be surprised if your battery life isn't quite what it used to be."
Anyways, I haven't found a way to change the GMail application to a poll model rather than push so as an alternative I've setup K9-Mail against my GMail account and have it poll on a regular interval and disabled the GMail application altogether.

So you want your Gmail account to update at a predifined interval (like every hour?)?
This is simple: Open up the Email App (NOT Gmail), and enter your full gmail account ([email protected]) and password. It will set up your Gmail account in the Email app. In this app press Menu > Account Settings, and set the email check frequency to your liking. You can also set other options like delete emails from the server when you delete them on the Email App.
In this way you will use the Email app to check emails, meaning you can turn auto-sync off and save battery.

You could also sync your email account once. Then turn off sync. And manually sync your email anytime you want to check for new mail. Since it's not "urgent" as you said.
Or do as melterx pointed out.

Thanks guys for all solutions provided. I'll test them out and see what's happening
Answering to the guy who mentioned about how long should battery last, well, I'm simply not used to charge my phone daily. I had Touch HD before the N1, and with same usage (phone calls, gmail sync, internet) I had almost 3 days with a full charge.
Well, I'm still blaming the "new phone" factor for my battery draining problem, and I mean by this that I'm simply using it too much compared to a normal, "already used to it", usage.
But again, there are other topics for battery usage, so let's keep this only for email sync options

turn off auto-sync. when you want it to fire up, fire it up, then shut it down again. i went all day today, and ran less than half the battery off, because it wasn't polling over and over and over...

I'm not sure how much push drains the battery. One of my Gmail accounts is a work account. I have it and my personal email on push. Went for 10 hours, got about 40-45 emails with several calls and numerous text messages and still went down to 57%. I do have my phone on 3G most of the day(gotta love Atlanta).

Critical SyncManager Bug in JI6

There is a critical bug in JI6 with the SyncManager and Exchange Push synching. Periodically it will turn into a run away process while synching. The process will get stuck downloading and uploading over 3G.
It is critical because it makes the phone very hot to the touch, rapidly drains battery, and uses a lot of data. The process will not stop until the battery is dead. It happened last night to me, and from a 100% charged battery, I woke up to 5% while on the charger and a critical low battery warning. Looking at T-Mo's data tracking, it used 60MB of data.
Has anyone else had this issue? Where can I officially report this issue to T-Mobile/Samsung?

I've seen a similar issue, and don't know a way around it.
I thought you might be on to something, and you are, certainly.
I turned off sync for email this morning, saved my settings, hit home, killed all running processes, and returned to the settings to double check, and none of the settings had taken. I repeated this process thinking maybe I missed the "save" the first time around, and yielded the same results.
So... I deleted the corporate email acct. saved my settings, hit home, killed all running processes, and returned to the settings yet again, and noticed it had restarted itself with no account to sync.
I have no advice on how to solve this, I just wanted to add my voice to the chorus. Maybe someone smarter than both of us know of a solution.
To note: Odin JI6 flash, JI2 modem, Bionix Fusion 1.1 ROM, 2G only, all DRM .apk's removed via root explorer, all sync to manual, and 1 hour off charger, down to 76% from fully charged. My opinion? Vibrant firmware fail.

My solution so far has been to kill the running process for the SyncManager, and then go launch Email and hit refresh. That tends to fix it until the next time it runs away.
Here's how I identify it:
1. 3G logo constantly has upload and download arrows turned on.
2. Phone gets hot.
3. No email is received.
I can work around the battery use. The big concern to me is the data use. It is simply a waste of data and I don't want to hit the 5 GB limit.

I have the same issue. I thought I had fixed it a couple days ago because it didn't happen for two days. I had taken out the battery for about ten minutes. But this morning it did it again. It seems to happen alot immediately after being taken off the charger. Although that's not the only time it happens.
We really need a solution to this as you have to babysit your phone at all times to make sure it's not going berserk and draining your battery.
Joel

I re-setup my corporate account with neither the security or accept all certificates options set, and it's not as bad. I.E. battery usage down to reasonable drain and phone no longer hot to the touch. My IT guy theorized that since it's checking for SSL it could get stuck in a loop, and runaway.
<shrugs>
In the meantime I found a 3500 battery/new back on ebay and clicked buy now.

So has anyone found a fix for this problem yet?

Solution to large battery drain when idle

I have found the solution for MY large battery drain:
The problem has been, that my phone used 5% of battery per hour when it’s merely lying around. The battery graph was a straight, quickly decreasing line. So the culprit was not something that happend from time to time but always.
One very disturbing thing: The indicators below the battery graph shows when phone, Wifi and the screen were on. In additions it shows when the phone has been awake.
Even if the screen was off and I did not touch the phone, the „Awake“ indicator constantly showed every minute for a very short time. So the phone never went to sleep, it woke up constantly all the time. Sorry, unfortunately I don’t have a screen capture for this.
Deactivating automatic updates for applications and setting the Emails to sync never didn’t help. I even erased all the Samsung crapware from the system folder, but to no use. The battery died after one day of not doing anything with the phone.
Then I deactivated syncing of the contacts and the calendar for my WindowsLive-Exchange account and the battery drain stopped. I now have less than 1% per hour (see screenshot) when the phone is simply lying around.
So, for me the culprit is the syncing for contacts and calender via Exchange. Unfortunately there is no option to set the sync interval for these.
- Anyone can reproduce this issue?
- Is this just a problem with WindowsLive Exchange or does this happen with other Exchange accounts too?
- Is there a possibility to set the sync interval for contacts and calendar (somehow, maybe via a config file)?

There seems to be something seriously different if not broken in GB 2.3.3. Apps that work perfectly fine in Froyo are keeping GB 2.3.3 from going to sleep. I've isolated several apps that either keep the screen from shutting off or keep the device constantly awake even when it it's no longer running/cached/screen is off. And, these are programs that work perfectly fine in Froyo and do not cause idle drain. Wonder if this is something 2.3.4 addresses...
Sent from my GT-I9100 using Tapatalk

I have frozen:
social hub, email (i use another one), and few more programs that I dont use but noticed that they stay on without any reason,
if 3G or wifi is ON battery drain is prery bad, I guess this is a bug in 2.3.3 as cmd512 said.
Last night I turned off wifi and 3g and made sure that wifi share + manager are off (they can be turned off easily if u untick "use wifi" in location settings menu)
so with everything off for 7 hours sleep (dont rly need my phone while sleeping) battery was down 2% only :O
the moment I turn on 3G Android OS use jumps to the skies :X

skycamefalling said:
I have found the solution for MY large battery drain:
The problem has been, that my phone used 5% of battery per hour when it’s merely lying around. The battery graph was a straight, quickly decreasing line. So the culprit was not something that happend from time to time but always.
One very disturbing thing: The indicators below the battery graph shows when phone, Wifi and the screen were on. In additions it shows when the phone has been awake.
Even if the screen was off and I did not touch the phone, the „Awake“ indicator constantly showed every minute for a very short time. So the phone never went to sleep, it woke up constantly all the time. Sorry, unfortunately I don’t have a screen capture for this.
Deactivating automatic updates for applications and setting the Emails to sync never didn’t help. I even erased all the Samsung crapware from the system folder, but to no use. The battery died after one day of not doing anything with the phone.
Then I deactivated syncing of the contacts and the calendar for my WindowsLive-Exchange account and the battery drain stopped. I now have less than 1% per hour (see screenshot) when the phone is simply lying around.
So, for me the culprit is the syncing for contacts and calender via Exchange. Unfortunately there is no option to set the sync interval for these.
- Anyone can reproduce this issue?
- Is this just a problem with WindowsLive Exchange or does this happen with other Exchange accounts too?
- Is there a possibility to set the sync interval for contacts and calendar (somehow, maybe via a config file)?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Hmmm..it could be. I will try this also. First I just take the contacts out, because that is not so necessary for me. Calendar is pretty necessary for me and emails are a must. If I have to take the calendar out, then so be it. I will manually sync it once a week then.

By the way, I just noticed that with my gmail account the sync icon is constant in the calendar.
Now when I unchecked it and checked back it went away after a while.
I am not sure if it was sycning all the time without luck. Lets see.

I think calendar synch is on of the probleme. With calendar sync my phone drain 5% per hour in idle mode without 1% by one or two hours.

It's quite strange that there's quite a lot of these threads now all saying about how bad the battery is but I'm amazed by how good the battery is. I don't use my phone a huge amount especially at work and when I get home I use it for a quick web browse and the occasional text message and phone call. Most days I will still have 80% or more left by 23:30 having been on since 07:15. Today I checked my phone at 12:30 and the battery had only gone down 1% in just over 5 hours. All I did with it from 07:15 was occasionally take it out of sleep but not unlock it to check for any notifications. Since then I've been using the web (data) for about half hour or so, an hour of music listening and texting and right now I have 77% left after 12.5 hours off charge. Therefore I think my SGSII has the best battery life I could ask for.

AvRS said:
It's quite strange that there's quite a lot of these threads now all saying about how bad the battery is but I'm amazed by how good the battery is. I don't use my phone a huge amount especially at work and when I get home I use it for a quick web browse and the occasional text message and phone call. Most days I will still have 80% or more left by 23:30 having been on since 07:15. Today I checked my phone at 12:30 and the battery had only gone down 1% in just over 5 hours. All I did with it from 07:15 was occasionally take it out of sleep but not unlock it to check for any notifications. Since then I've been using the web (data) for about half hour or so, an hour of music listening and texting and right now I have 77% left after 12.5 hours off charge. Therefore I think my SGSII has the best battery life I could ask for.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Really depends on what apps you have running, as you can see from my original thread on this "Awake all the time during idle" issue:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1094666
But in general, agreed. Once I got rid of that bug, the device has been fantastic with battery life. And, for a stock ROM, that's damn impressive!

cmd512 said:
But in general, agreed. Once I got rid of that bug, the device has been fantastic with battery life. And, for a stock ROM, that's damn impressive!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I fully agree. Now that I don't have the "wake-up" issue anymore, the battery lifetime is almost as good as the Omnia7 -that's damn impressive for a modern Smartphone with such a hardware!

For me, I turned off my wifi, gps and "my location". And most importantly, my applications are not running when it is on idle. Go to task manager by holding the home folder and click exit all. Or you might try to clear the ram memory.

i have turned off gps, wifi and syncing but still getting battery drains can´t even last for a whole day. But I installed Litening ROM just now and see if this helps . I was on KE2 before flashing custom rom

skycamefalling said:
I have found the solution for MY large battery drain:
The problem has been, that my phone used 5% of battery per hour when it’s merely lying around. The battery graph was a straight, quickly decreasing line. So the culprit was not something that happend from time to time but always.
One very disturbing thing: The indicators below the battery graph shows when phone, Wifi and the screen were on. In additions it shows when the phone has been awake.
Even if the screen was off and I did not touch the phone, the „Awake“ indicator constantly showed every minute for a very short time. So the phone never went to sleep, it woke up constantly all the time. Sorry, unfortunately I don’t have a screen capture for this.
Deactivating automatic updates for applications and setting the Emails to sync never didn’t help. I even erased all the Samsung crapware from the system folder, but to no use. The battery died after one day of not doing anything with the phone.
Then I deactivated syncing of the contacts and the calendar for my WindowsLive-Exchange account and the battery drain stopped. I now have less than 1% per hour (see screenshot) when the phone is simply lying around.
So, for me the culprit is the syncing for contacts and calender via Exchange. Unfortunately there is no option to set the sync interval for these.
- Anyone can reproduce this issue?
- Is this just a problem with WindowsLive Exchange or does this happen with other Exchange accounts too?
- Is there a possibility to set the sync interval for contacts and calendar (somehow, maybe via a config file)?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I have noticed the same issue trying to sync to a exchange 2003 account. It seems that my calendar is syncing either every minute or about every 20 minutes. I also noticed the same issue with my gmail calendar. I have tried two different phones and reset each one several times. The same problem keeps occurring. I may have to download touchdown for email, contacts and calendar. It just sucks because then I will have two calendar applications (one for work and one for home). This is very frustrating.
Are you still having issues with echange calendar sync?

After updating to KE7, I have noticed that every time I receive an exchange email the screen wakes up for a second or two and goes to sleep again.
Didn't occur on previous firmware. Anyone else with this issue and a possible fix?

Is social hub the best solution for IM? I would like to have Yahoo and MSN messengers on always, so should I use another less power hungry client? When people mention calendar synch is it google calendar they're talking about? My google calendar is important for me, so how to optimize it?

brademcee said:
Are you still having issues with echange calendar sync?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yes, unfortunately. I am now syncing manually with a switch on the homescreen.
I am now hoping for Android 2.3.4 to fix this issue.

Have a look at comment #290:
http://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=11126#c290

I have an X10i with Jerpelea's CM7 with custom kernel and that had a very annoying deep sleep issue (the phone never went deep sleeping) which caused the battery to drain very quickly, but Temoi19 found out that by disabling automatic time updates and manually selecting the operator, made the phone to deep sleep. So I took a shoot and tried the same trick on my new Galaxy S II and now when idle my phone barely eats power. After over an hour after unplugging I was still at 100%. I don't know if I am just lucky, but it is worth a try
Sent from my GT-I9100 using XDA Premium App

I also have this issue with my sgs2. I looked into the exchange settings and there is the option to change the syncing. It was set to push, I now i changed it to manual and will report back the results tomorrow. The drain in general only occurs when mobile data is enabled here. Didn't try with wifi yet.
Sent from my GT-P1000 using XDA App

pik1 said:
I also have this issue with my sgs2. I looked into the exchange settings and there is the option to change the syncing. It was set to push, I now i changed it to manual and will report back the results tomorrow. The drain in general only occurs when mobile data is enabled here. Didn't try with wifi yet.
Sent from my GT-P1000 using XDA App
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You can leave the syncing to push, it's just for the EMails and they're working fine.
I'd propose to disable the calendar and contact sync in Einstellungen -> Konten -> Automatisch synchronisieren

skycamefalling said:
You can leave the syncing to push, it's just for the EMails and they're working fine.
I'd propose to disable the calendar and contact sync in Einstellungen -> Konten -> Automatisch synchronisieren
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
according to the logs if there are no changes in contacts or calendar both will be synced only once per day. so this should not be the issue.