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

Guys
I dont know about all of you but I have spent the best part of a few days trying to be tolerant with the appalling battery life.
to set the scene: -
- it is a native orange build (upgrade from them) it has exchange activesync emaill and I have tried it with and without push activated (10 minute polling when not constant)
- It has one other e mail account - Hotmail, which is connected to sync every 2 hours
- it has NO other applications of any kind, it is not used for GPS, browsing etc (a deliberate ploy for me to see if the basics work) and the battery life is a complete joke, if anything it is worse than my previous WM devices. a full charge which is disconnected from the mains at 10am in the morning means I am down to a single bar by around 6-30pm. in this time I have checked mails on occasion, had about 30 min worth of calls and thats it basically
I, like many people on this forum am a seasoned user, but I would expect a minimum of 1 working days use (say 12 - 14 hours) and this is just not the case.
I will be returing this phone under my 14 day policy, but as one last try, I just wondered if anyone had something really obvious I was missing? all of the settings are 'out of the box' and i have used tweakHD but I must confess I do not want to have to mess about with the settings too much and quite frankly I dont see why I should, unless this type of performance is considered normal these days!
any thoughts guys?
regards
Kerry

12. Disable 'Beam' in Settings to conserve power.
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=462481

I'd do the same too if I were you. A complete rundown of the battery on not so heavy usage in 8 hours is definitely not standard. Might be defective. Your battery should last you at least 14-16 hours on that type of usage. Oh and one other thing as an after thought, you mentioned the phone was new. Did you run the battery in a couple of cycles yet? A complete charge and a discharge of about 4-5 cycles sets the battery in its paces. Fyi.

I would take a look at these two threads.
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=458442
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=447452

thanks for the replies
thanks for the replies, I will study the replies and get an exchange unit based on the comments.
It has had three full charge / discharge cycles in the last 5 days, it wasnt difficult given how fast the battery ran out!
thanks so much for the help guys
Kerry

Mine also didn't last for more than a few hours on the first week, cause of the excessive playing around with the new toy, but after that I get 2 solid days on average usage with 2 bars to spare before I put it back on the charger.

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.
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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).

Windows Live Push vs. my battery

When I have Windows Live Push ("as items arrive," "always") enabled on my HD2 my battery life tanks. In about 8 hours it drops 20% or more while in standby without doing anything else. That's about 40 hours of standby battery life.
When I have it set to manual my battery drops 2% in 8 hours. That's around 400 hours of standby battery, which makes a lot more sense.
Is this normal? Does anyone else experience this using this feature? I am seriously curious as to why MS Live push e-mail keeps up an ACTIVE data connection that is not defeatable, and why it insists on wrecking battery life. If this is a consistent phenomenon, then push e-mail in this way is absolutely useless.
I have seen people with MS Exchange-based push (not Live) email get fine battery life, so this bothers me.

friend'scatdied said:
When I have Windows Live Push ("as items arrive," "always") enabled on my HD2 my battery life tanks. In about 8 hours it drops 20% or more while in standby without doing anything else. That's about 40 hours of standby battery life.
When I have it set to manual my battery drops 2% in 8 hours. That's around 400 hours of standby battery, which makes a lot more sense.
Is this normal? Does anyone else experience this using this feature? I am seriously curious as to why MS Live push e-mail keeps up an ACTIVE data connection that is not defeatable, and why it insists on wrecking battery life. If this is a consistent phenomenon, then push e-mail in this way is absolutely useless.
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It's perfectly normal mate. For push to work your phone needs to keep an open connection to the live server, which means some kind of heartbeat or keepalive message being sent every now and then (anywhere between every 30 seconds to every 10 minutes - it varies from software to software). This is therefore constantly using your battery. I was amazed at how much my battery life increased by changing the live synch settings from "as items arrive" to "every 15 minutes".
Look at turning down how regularly you update things like the weather and facebook too, and you'll see just how good the battery life on this thing really is!

johncmolyneux said:
It's perfectly normal mate. For push to work your phone needs to keep an open connection to the live server, which means some kind of heartbeat or keepalive message being sent every now and then (anywhere between every 30 seconds to every 10 minutes - it varies from software to software). This is therefore constantly using your battery. I was amazed at how much my battery life increased by changing the live synch settings from "as items arrive" to "every 15 minutes".
Look at turning down how regularly you update things like the weather and facebook too, and you'll see just how good the battery life on this thing really is!
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I know, but one of the reasons I got my HD2 was because I'm a MSN junkie. I have read that people have got "2 days" battery life with MS Exchange push and that makes me feel kind of bothered. My Motorola Milestone with Gmail push didn't see anywhere near this kind of battery drain.

johncmolyneux said:
It's perfectly normal mate. For push to work your phone needs to keep an open connection to the live server, which means some kind of heartbeat or keepalive message being sent every now and then (anywhere between every 30 seconds to every 10 minutes - it varies from software to software). This is therefore constantly using your battery. I was amazed at how much my battery life increased by changing the live synch settings from "as items arrive" to "every 15 minutes".
Look at turning down how regularly you update things like the weather and facebook too, and you'll see just how good the battery life on this thing really is!
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Click to collapse
i have MS Exchange push e-mail using 3G/HSDPA and I have experienced extra battery life when compared to POP3 email synchronization !
It seems to me that push e-mail is more energy efficient.
Last night @ 23h00: 100% battery. This morning 9h30: 95% battery...

Well my phone went from 1 day of average use to 2-3 days of average use, just by turning off push email, so we're getting different results from the same thing.

Battery Life?

I've had the HTC Aria for about four days now and my biggest issues is the battery drains to quickly. At first I attributed it to use because android phones prompt you to use them more often. However, even without use it still drains pretty rapidly. Does anyone know of a solution to this issue software wise. I have already turned off Bluetooth, GPS and Wifi. Are there other solutions

I got mine on Saturday, and I've actually gotten pretty good battery life out of it. I'm still in the habit of charging it every night, like I had to do with my old WinMo phone, but I think I could probably go two days without a charge. And that's with GPS / data always on, Wifi parts of the day, and pretty heavy use, since I'm always playing with it.
Have you tried something like Advanced Task Killer to keep apps closed that you aren't using? You can also adjust your screen brightness and timeout to try and save power.

It says that of my power is used by cellular idle or something like that 50% of it was used by that. Could it be my AT&T service

I don't get more than 10 hours out of mine. When I know I will be out all day, I turn the screen brightness almost all the way down to help conserve energy.

Good as it Gets.
With basic usage (some texting, a few calls and some market browsing or playing a game here and there) about 2 to 2.5 days without charging. Maybe the ones having issues with there phone sucking battery have to many widgets running.
In my current configuration I am only using 3 of my screens and only 3 widgets [favorites (small one), HTC clock/weather widget, and the HTC calendar widget (small)]. I have my work email checking every 30 minutes for syncing. I also have gmail and the default mail app pulling mail. I run ATK but only to kill apps on startup (cause it runs almost everything), other than that you don't need a task killer as you will have to reload these tasks next time and that will drain battery. I don't use it after that to kill anything. I am also running my screen at about 30% brightness.
Just some tips, widgets are nice, but they suck the battery life as well as constant updates. Check to see what you are running and disable/remove what is not needed or adjust sync times.

My battery life is fine. I got two days over the weekend with light usage. You need to look at what services are running and disable any widgets that you dont need. You may also want to look at the sync settings and turn off things you dont use (such as news). You do not need a task killer.

Also, see this post:
cranked said:
some quick tips:
1) disable market notifications - Market -> Downloads -> Notifications -> 'Don't Notify Me
2) Lower the sync times for your social network apps like twitter and facebook (or make them manual)
If you still suffer, have a look at some of the great tips HERE on the Cyanogenmod forums...ignore 1 and 3.
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Also one might do *#*#4636#*#* then change phone setting from WCDMA to GSM .... Then that get little more out of battery...

It's critical that you turn off auto-sync; I have found that it absolutely destroys battery life.
Before I was losing maybe 5-10% every hour on standby, but ever since turning off auto-sync, I'm still sitting at 100% battery after 5 hours of standby.
Turning off mobile data/Wi-Fi doesn't make an impact on battery life, in my experience.

hi2u2 said:
It's critical that you turn off auto-sync if you don't want update to happen, such as Facebook, email, google account (cal/contact) sync, etc..; I have found that it absolutely destroys battery life.
Before I was losing maybe 5-10% every hour on standby, but ever since turning off auto-sync, I'm still sitting at 100% battery after 5 hours of standby.
Turning off mobile data/Wi-Fi doesn't make an impact on battery life, in my experience.
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I edited your response..
Auto-Sync in itself is not going to be a problem.. Depends on what's syncing. EVERYONE will have different battery life because everyone uses their phones differently. Different configurations, different accounts used, different amounts of traffic on those accounts, not to mention actual usage patterns.

khaytsus said:
I edited your response..
Auto-Sync in itself is not going to be a problem.. Depends on what's syncing. EVERYONE will have different battery life because everyone uses their phones differently. Different configurations, different accounts used, different amounts of traffic on those accounts, not to mention actual usage patterns.
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90% of people will have *slightly* different battery life.
5% of people will drain it fast.
5% will use it like a voice phone and might even get 16 hrs out of it.
But to turn off all apps makes for an invalid test because then you're testing the phone as if it were a non-smartphone, like a voice only phone.
I think the battery is too small for me and probably too small for most people. I look forward to fat batteries for this great phone.

bwolmarans said:
90% of people will have *slightly* different battery life.
5% of people will drain it fast.
5% will use it like a voice phone and might even get 16 hrs out of it.
But to turn off all apps makes for an invalid test because then you're testing the phone as if it were a non-smartphone, like a voice only phone.
I think the battery is too small for me and probably too small for most people. I look forward to fat batteries for this great phone.
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My wife gets 2+ days out of hers... The battery is not that much smaller than my Nexus One, a more powerful phone, and I'm a power user with a lot of crap running including IMAP push mail, weather syncing... I look in at Market, Facebook, Twitter and manually sync those types of things etc.. I can easily get a full day out of it, off charger ~8am back on the charger midnight, 20-30% left. What I don't do is sit staring at my phone all day or play games for 8 hours at work, nor do I use it as a mp3 player..