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Hi everyone,
Relative n00b here so please excuse the amateurish question. Anyone know of an app that would tell you at what time or at what interval 3rd party apps such as Facebook, Twitter, Newsrob, etc (these are a couple that i have) would start syncing data? I've had dramatic battery life improvements by increasing the time interval for data syncs (for example while I'm at work I'm more than happy for these apps to sync only every 2 hours), but you have to go into each apps' settings menus to discover and/or change their timings.
So my app idea here is to have a high-level overview of the data sync schedule on an Android phone. That way, if you d/l something new, you can quickly go into the schedule app and see if this new app's hitting servers every 5 minutes and stop it before it drains too much battery and/or bandwidth.
Just an idea. Anyone know of a pre-existing tool for this? If not, might be a good rainy-day project.
-Carl
On the Gmail app on the Vibrant, is there any way to set when your phone checks for mail? I'd like to be able to lower the rate at which it checks. Can't seem to find any option for it whatsoever.
As far as I know, there is no polling interval. New e-mails are pushed directly to your phone the moment they arrive.
vapotrini said:
On the Gmail app on the Vibrant, is there any way to set when your phone checks for mail? I'd like to be able to lower the rate at which it checks. Can't seem to find any option for it whatsoever.
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If you want to do this, you need to turn off email sync, with gmail , and set gmail up with the regular email app on the phone, gmail gets push mail notifictations, the regular app polls at a set time.
Thanks for the responses.
thegreatcity said:
As far as I know, there is no polling interval. New e-mails are pushed directly to your phone the moment they arrive.
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Well if that's true then surely that is hurting battery life, no?
A further question:
Will Gmail still update if you turn off Auto Sync? What about Background Data?
if you turn off auto sync, then nothing will come to the phone that is on that account, email, contacts, calendar, etc. its either all on or all off
vapotrini said:
Well if that's true then surely that is hurting battery life, no?
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Not necessarily. You may want to look into other options to conserve battery life, but if you feel that Gmail is the culprit, Id say that watcher has the appropriate solution. The regular email app, is decidedly less feature filled, but you can certainly change the polling interval with it.
Kubernetes said:
Will Gmail still update if you turn off Auto Sync? What about Background Data?
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No, with Auto-sync off, you only get calls and texts.
Push is not Poll
vapotrini said:
Well if that's true then surely that is hurting battery life, no?
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I don't believe that is necessarily true. Gmail leaves a TCP/IP connection open to a server, but transmits no data unless there is a new message. In other words, think of your phone as running a very simple and secure server that is ready and listening for Google to connect to it and alert it that there is a new message to retrieve (I don't think it's really a server, but it helps conceptually). Leaving that port open and a constant connection with no data flowing requires no additional battery life over what is necessary for your cellular modem to be on (which you need to be able to receive calls as well).
Wikipedia says that the technology used is Microsoft ActiveSync, but I'm inclined to believe it's XMPP (which is what Google Talk uses and is built into Android for other uses as well). But the above description of the technology is valid either way.
(spamblocker, remove the spaces) http :// en.wikipedia. org /wiki/ Push_e-mail # Google_Android
Every time a message is received, battery life is consumed in order to download the message. So, if you were to get the message on your desktop first, handle it, and delete it, I presume that would save you the battery life of the download of that message, but that is a very nominal amount of battery life. I wouldn't worry about it.
watcher64 said:
If you want to do this, you need to turn off email sync, with gmail , and set gmail up with the regular email app on the phone, gmail gets push mail notifictations, the regular app polls at a set time.
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Click to collapse
Just a heads up to the OP (or anyone interested) regarding the stock email application- my experience was that the polling interval was unreliable. I have 3 email accounts, 2 of them were set to check on frequent intervals like 10 minutes or something and the third was set up to check on the hour.
Often times the stock email app would miss the intervals or would not check at all. Additionally there were numerous occasions that mail was sitting on my server but the stock vibrant mail would report no messages.
Your mileage may vary as many people seem to have very different experiences with their phones and bugs. My experience with the stock email app was pretty poor so I thought it worth sharing.
GPS and such annoyed me but I figured I'd be able to wait it out for a fix. Email was nearly a deal breaker though, especially having these problems after coming from blackberrys which do a great job with email.
I figured gmail was the way to go but i didnt want to get into some complex forwading scheme fr all of my email addresses.
The way I ended up working it out was to set up a free Google business account and change the mx records on my mail server to run through Google servers instead of my webhosts servers. Now I'm running all of my email addresses on the Gmail application and have push email and aside from a few minor gripes with the gmail/android interface I am pretty happy overall.
I'd suggest sticking with the gmail application, push email is a good thing.
Juice Defender from the market allows for setting how often your phone connects to a data connection. More or less doing the same thing.
I don't personally use it since I don't care, but it should answer the OP's question with a working solution.
Thanks for all the responses guys, a lot of good alternatives out there it seems.
I don't get all that many emails a day so was just curious if disabling it would save a lot of battery life. Since the general consensus is that it doesn't I'll leave it be.
All,
I'm currently using Touchdown for my exchange work email and works great. But I'm currently trying to figure out what is sucking my battery life from my device..i'm getting close to 11hrs if I'm lucky but more like 9/10hrs on normal use. No facebook sync just gmail, touchdown, weather. Brightness at auto.
I'm trying to eliminate the obvious and thinking Touchdown might be a battery sucker and hoping the default exchange email app might be better.
What do you think?
I like touchdown, very impressive app, but greatly prefer the integration of HTC's mail/contact/calendar apps for Exchange sync along with my other non-Exchange accounts. The nice thing is that since Touchdown is self contained, you could add your Exchange account to the phone's sync accounts and have both running just to see which you prefer (although this would obviously compound your battery issue).
That said, for your battery life issues, you should check if the init process is using a lot of CPU, as detailed in my thread here:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=839935
Also, I personally find that the light sensor/auto brightness on this phone sucks. The slightest shadow/light changes have the screen dimming/brightening instantly. It's really distracting to me. I just set the brightness around 25-30% and it's fine except for outside on the brightest of days. Also improves battery life considerably.
werk,
Yup, i already check the USB Debug setting. Not much improvement there. Well my question is do you think the default HTC Exchange mail app would suck less battery life than the Touchdown?
I think it'd be a wash if they're both setup for push mail. They're both using Exchange Activesync in the background. I can't imagine they're coded all that differently tthat one would have much more impact on battery life than the other.
How's your battery status after the last facebook update?
From what I'm seeing facebook is holding a partial wakelock for the whole time
Is this happening in any situation?
Removing the facebook account from the phone fixes the problem... but would like to keep it in...
now I'm trying with the notifications disabled...
FB has the highest partial wakelock use on mine, but it's not massive, it's bar is about 1/5 full.
but the timing is embarassing compared to other apps :/
to me it looked that the android system wakelock were very high too...
i'm trying to see if the notifications disabled it lowers down...
How can I check this?
*#*#4636#*#*
then select "battery history"
Or use Anycut to create a shortcut to the 'Testing' app.
same here.. uninstalled.
No problems here.
41 seconds total.
Although I would LOVE to be able to turn off the Facebook push notifications. Despite having disabled everything inside the FB app, they still get pushed to my phone, which drives me ****ing crazy.
I suspect having everything turned off would be why you have a very low wakelock?
Mine is very low. I set facebook to never check for updates since the last release added push notifications. I don't think polling for updates is necessary anymore. No clue why it even has the option still.
Sent from my Nexus One using XDA App
hexix said:
Mine is very low. I set facebook to never check for updates since the last release added push notifications. I don't think polling for updates is necessary anymore. No clue why it even has the option still.
Sent from my Nexus One using XDA App
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Facebook developers suck balls, that's why.
JCopernicus said:
Facebook developers suck balls, that's why.
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Status updates aren't pushed, I'm guessing that it'd fry the servers. So if you want your synced contacts to display their status in the contact popup you have to poll them.
Somehow the iPhone and Blackberry apps are able to use push notifications properly without frying anyone's servers. Email and SMS notifications can also be sent out instantly. I'm pretty certain there is no technical reason why the Android app can't work right.
pfmiller said:
Somehow the iPhone and Blackberry apps are able to use push notifications properly without frying anyone's servers. Email and SMS notifications can also be sent out instantly. I'm pretty certain there is no technical reason why the Android app can't work right.
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Sure there is, facebook developers suck balls.
pfmiller said:
Somehow the iPhone and Blackberry apps are able to use push notifications properly without frying anyone's servers. Email and SMS notifications can also be sent out instantly. I'm pretty certain there is no technical reason why the Android app can't work right.
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The news feed updates don't get "pushed" to either of those devices. The polling frequency is for updating the news feed which you would want when using the facebook widget.
I'm not interested in wall updates getting pushed. Notifications get pushed to those devices, and that's all I expect from the Android app.
Newbie question, what is a wake lock and how does it drain battery?
killing the facebook app solved my problem (not only facebook where being very "active"... but also the "android system" was kept constantly awake!!)
in the usage history the system was basically never sleeping... running the whole time :/
as for now I started facebook again... and disabled the notification thing... let see what will happens...
I can confirm that disabling the notifications "fixed" the problem... no more continuos wakelock when app is started...
dunno if push is really working... (don't appear so... will see in the next days :/)
Rusty! said:
I suspect having everything turned off would be why you have a very low wakelock?
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Yeah, probably.
The Facebook app is just atrocious. I hate it with a fiery passion. Basically the ONLY 2 reasons I have it installed are 1) Facebook/Contact picture sync and 2) Upload from gallery to FB.
How aboute the data usage of phone 7?
Does it stil use large amounts or is this solved with one of the updates?
Can't really find a clear answer.
not noticed it being high, but then i never did, perhaps some more anti windows phone FUD going around?
Make sure you switch off the automatic e-mail checking, location and hub updates. The People hub will not update until you actually open it, but then keep in mind: if you have Windows Live, Facebook, Google etc, they will all update once you open the hub - the pictures, status updates, messages and so on will eat your data. Set your e-mails to be checked manually. Disable reporting services.
Thanks for the info. I checked with my provider today and found out that i have 1gig limit, so i don't think it's a real problem.
thjansen said:
How aboute the data usage of phone 7?
Does it stil use large amounts or is this solved with one of the updates?
Can't really find a clear answer.
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Hey, i have:
1x exchange mailbox sync (mail, contacts,calendar...) - 15min check
1x gmail acc - only mail - hourly check
weather set to update every hour
set up all sync (fb, twetter, linked in)
WiFi mostly off (save battery) when not needed.
Data usage ranges from 90-150MB/month.