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Confused about K-9 email app...pls help!

Gink

Well-Known Member
Feb 14, 2010
233
11
Bronco Nation
Hi Everyone. Any help/advice is appreciated.

I did some research on the K-9 email app yesterday and decided to give it a try, but I have a few questions:

1) is K-9 automatically push or does it depend on the type of account you have? I currently have 1 hotmail address and 2 gmail addresses set-up. I have the 2 gmail accounts set up like this: "folder poll check frequency" set to "every 24 hours" but I'm still getting instant notifications throughout the day. Is that normal? Does that mean gmail is getting pushed automatically? If gmail is being pushed then why is there a "poll" setting as well? I don't quite understand.... The hotmail address I have set up to poll every 5 minutes. If email is being pushed is this redundant? If this is redundant see question #2.

2) if email is being pushed to the device should I be experiencing an ENORMOUS battery drain? (FYI: I just upgraded to the Seidio 1750 battery, after the first full charge I went almost 2 full days on the Eris when I was normally only getting a day. At the time I did not have K-9 installed. I let the battery completely drain but then after the 2nd full charge and installing K-9 I'm back to only about a day with this new battery with only light to moderate use. :()

3) Someone asked this question on another thread but never got an answer.... In Settings there is a setting titled "Background sync." Does that mean that email is checked when other background processes are running?

My goal with K-9 is to get my hotmail as quickly as possible (without completely draining my battery in the process) and my gmail accounts to update only once a day. How do I accomplish this?

Thanks again for any help....
 
I should also add that I'm not interested in using the native GMail app. Thanks.

I tested some things... I set my gmail accounts to poll 'never' and I still received email instantaneously leading me to believe that gmail must be 'pushed.'

I also set my hotmail to 'poll' never and am still waiting for my test emails to come thru. So perhaps hotmail is NOT push.

Is this the difference between POP and IMAP? I'm still trying to understand...
 
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Well to my understanding(iam no expert) imap is automatically pushed and pop3 accounts are polled. Gmail is automatically pushed unless you disable it using settings>data sync. As for k-9 it is a great app i started out with every minute when i got my hero and it killed the battery fast, currently i have it set to every 10 minutes and i get pretty good use now.
 
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Hotmail is POP only and can only be polled. I see errors in my K9 app that Hotmail doesn't allow you check more frequently than every 15 minutes I think.

I too have my Gmail set up as an IMAP server in K9. When you set up an IMAP server on K9 there is an option to check to enable push email support. I *think* this might be checked by default and I can see nothing in the account settings to change this. With this option on, and an IMAP server that supports PUSH email, you will get instant email whatever your polling frequency is set to.

If you only want to check Gmail once per day, I suggest removing the account and re-creating it, paying attention at the account creation stage to the check box to enable push email and making sure that is set to off. Then set the polling frequency to once per day and see if that makes a difference.
 
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