Extend battery charge by disabling synch with Exchange Server

[my1stSmartPhone]

Many people (admittedly of the slightly older generation) don't need to be constantly connected to their email. Addiionally, those from the Palm generation are OK with syncing their calendar and contacts at the end of the day rather than needing constant sychronization with Outlook on their computer.

Well.

I found that if you turn off synchronization of with an Exchange Server over WiFi, the battery charge depletion crawls to zero (for all practical purposes) when the phone is put to sleep. For this to happen, one must have disabled data usage and ensured that WiFi is automatically disabled during sleep mode. I use CyanogenMod 12, and the battery depletion tracking gave a projection of umpteen days before depletion, as opposed to 1-2 days before I turned off syncrhonization. I could see the marked difference in the plot of the battery charge with time.

The funny thing is that before synchronization was disabled, I still had data usage turned off, and WiFi was set to be disabled whenever the phone was asleep. The only thing I can imagine would burn up battery charge so voraciously is CPU activity. Maybe the synch routine is CPU intensive. Who knows.

 

[AZgl1500]

I've been retired for almost 5 years, never used Outlook or any exchange server.

I achieved the rediculously long battery lifetimes by using MacroDroid to turn off DATA and WiFi when the phone is asleep.

My wife's S5 is used a couple times a week maybe for a phone call, her phone will run almost two full weeks between charges.

Mine gives me about 2 or 3 days depending on how much I use the GPS functions. I run several GPS apps at different times, and CoPilot w/turn by turn function.....

WAZE, to me is extremely wasteful of battery, I tried it last week on a m/c ride and in 3 hours time it had gone thru 75% of the battery. So, I uninstalled WAZE....

Nice to know that you can still use the Exchange Server but leave the sync turned off. Speaking of Palm Pilot..... I thought the world ended when they quit making those things. Mine broke several years ago....
But, the desktop application is still running and doing a very good job of keeping track of things for me.
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2 ea. Verizon Galaxy S5, 4.4.4 forever!, ART
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MacroDroid can help extend battery life
MacroDroid senses Screen off, turns Wifi & Data OFF
MacroDroid senses Screen UnLock, turns Data ON

 

[my1stSmartPhone]

Well, I never used Exchange Server at home either, and I only went with Outlook client because I wanted minimal incompatibility with calendar invites from work (I try to mirror all items between work and home calendars so that I don't miss anything). Prior to that, it was Thunderbird for email and Palm Desktop for calendar, contacts, & notes.

These days, things are so cloud-centric that I was glad to be able to find a home solution that *reliably* syncs the smartphone to Outlook client over local WiFi (AkrutoSync). I technically don't have an Exchange Server at home, but AkrutoSync simply makes the PC that is hosting Outlook client present an Exchange interface to the smartphone, and only for the purpose of syncing contacts, emails, etc. It basically replaces the conduit that Palm Desktop had with Palm handheld over the cable (can't recall whether it was USB). Similarly, it replaces the Apply sync between Outlook and iPod Touch via iTunes over USB.

I guess the value that I was trying to contribute in my post was the fact that disabling WiFi and Data usage was far from sufficient. I really had to disable the syncing as well in order for the battery charge to go from 1.6 days to umpteen days. You still have to re-enable sync when you want to sync, but that's rare. Once a day is all that's necessary.

 

[AZgl1500]

yes, that is important to note on disabling sync, as the app will keep firing up and trying to sync only to discover the data/wifi connection is gone....

When I worked for the City of Phoenix in the 911 department as a IT tech, we had to use their own internal vpn to log into Notes.... I hated that program and its' email app, was glad to be rid of it when I left. In fact, I hated anything that had to do with Symantec.

 

[my1stSmartPhone]

Agreed on the last point, but it must add some value as it is the corporate darling.

New info: Disabling sync is not enough. My battery usage rate went from infinitismal to highly significant mid-yesterday and that persisted past midnight. Basically sucking away all the battery charge that could have gone on for a few days more.

A few possible explanations: (i) The charge monitoring is not reliable; (ii) While the metric that is monitored may be OK, the battery behaviour is highly nonlinear toward the end of its charge cycle (which sort of means that the metric being monitored isn't all *that* OK); (iii) other apps are sucking up the juice.

It is common belief that leaving apps open and resident in memory is more power efficient that shutting them down after each usage, thereby requiring them to be started up again. This maybe true of the apps aren't actually active and hence burning up CPU cycles, but I believe that this is not the case for at least one app or service in my case. There aren't too many suspects. I've only installed Qumu PDF viewer and Google Apps (the latter only for the purpose of getting the former). I've prevented all the GApps services from launching using CyanogenMod's Privacy Guard. And I've been using Qumu for days on end. The *only* notable difference yesterdy from most days is that I got a slew of notifications from my calendar.

So...

It's either the little blinking notification LED that is the culprit, or the way that notifications are handled. Unless they use an incandescent microbulb for the LED, it's hard to see how the blinking can consume much more energy than viewing the whole screen for hours on end. I suspect it is how the notifications are managed.

The cure?

Empirically, it is to reboot the device. The battery usage levelled off thereafter to be nearly flatline with time.

 

[dvhttn]

Many people (admittedly of the slightly older generation) don't need to be constantly connected to their email. ...

Read this and found it to be ever so slightly patronising! What age are these of the " slightly older generation " you're talking about then?

 

[my1stSmartPhone]

I was actually referring to my generation there, which is...well...older than the smartphone generation. The internet came into being after adulthood.

 

[dvhttn]

I was actually referring to my generation there, which is...well...older than the smartphone generation. The internet came into being after adulthood.

Ah, got completely the wrong impression from your 1st post .... Seems like we're of roughly the 'same generation' then ....

 

[my1stSmartPhone]

Glad to clear that up.

New info: As it turns out, simply closing down all running apps doesn't slow down the consumption of battery charge. A reboot is necessary.