Sorry if someones already went this route, I couldnt find it. While trying to get notified instantly when a PS3 went for sale on craigslist I tested out a way to achieve this and not kill my battery. Anywho, I use a comcast email address and Im sure it works the same for most email addresses. All I did was forward my comcast mail to my sprint sms email address and leave a copy of the email on the server. Heres the steps:
- Go here and get your sms email address - http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/email-to-sms/
- Log into your email account thru your web browser and setup up email forwarding to your sms email address but leave a copy of the mail on the server.
- The second the server gets an email you will get a text message with the sender showing the email address of the mail sender and the text body will show the subject and fist 160 characters of the email.
- If its an email you want to fully read you'll have to open your email inbox on your phone and send/receive your emails. (This is why you need to leave a copy on your server).
Basically what this does is allow you to shut off the automatic send/receive at specific intervals and not use the data connection until you have an email you want to read. This drastically increased my battery life.