Does exchange push email use more or less battery?

[kirstein]

I would like an explanation of how the exchange implementation works on my TP2. I've seen some posts saying that exchange push kills battery, and other posts that say that push uses the normal notification channel on the phone which is always alive anyway, so it doesn't use any extra power until the email is delivered. Is there any definitive explanation as to how this works, and would it benefit battery life to switch to an exchange server rather than checking for new messages every 30 minutes.

Thanks

[brownhornet]

All I know is when I was using Seven push mail it drained the hell out of my battery. I would take my phone off the charger and by like... 1 or 2 PM I had to charge the phone again. Once I got rid of it my battery would easily last up until 9 or 10 pm and still have 30 or so % left. Now i'm not sure about the google push mail but I just got rid of it and use the regular email and set it to check once an hour.

[Meanee]

Been using exchange sync since original Touch (not touch pro)

With TP2, S2U2, I am able to leave the house on full charge, watch about 2 hours of video (core player), listen to some streaming music (Resco Radio), and do some light browsing, have about 10-15 minutes of voice usage, and without charging, would have about 30% left.

Granted, I never tried without removing exchange sync, but I doubt that it will add a lot to battery drain.

[Malatesta]

It is hard to compare.

Basically it works like this: POP3 is terrible for mobile email, not efficient at all. IMAP is much better.

Exchange is very good on battery, but it also depends on your coverage and amount of email you are getting.

Checking IMAP every 30mins is probably better than Push Exchange, but not by a huge margin.

[Bigsmith]

I find that push Exchange is no harder on my battery than manual polling every 30 minutes. If you are a light email user it is probably better than 30 minute polling since some polls will not result in any email being pulled down.

There are also some Exchange server-side settings for push email that have an effect on how much battery drain it causes.

[Gorby]

kirstein - here is how push email works with the exchange server. Your phone maintains connection by pinging the server once in a while (interval called "heart beat"). That ping lets the server know how to push email to your phone when it arrives (think of it as an destination address for example) and that's when some power is used. That ping interval is configurable on the server side, I am not sure what the default setting is but it is pretty frequent. So to answer your question - it does drain the battery a little faster due to those because of the heartbeat pings. It is not a lot, but it could be significant especially in the area where there is poor signal. I usualy set the schedule in Activesync to check my email every 10 minutes. This gives me a nice balance between getting my email fast enough for me and draining less battery. However, I have very strong reception at work so I can also go full day (or more depending on other usage) while I have it set to "as items arrive" as well. I would say try it and see if it makes any difference for you.

[kirstein]

Thanks Gorby, that's the info I was looking for. For now I think I'll just keep using pop3 and checking once an hour.

[helix139]

I noticed little (as in imperceptable) difference in battery life going from manual email download using IMAP to exchange push using gmail.