Help Why does "Push" Syncing use so much battery

You're comparing apples to oranges here,the two phones similarities,for all practical purposes,ends in the company name.

Push normally is not a power hog compared to not using push. After all, if you get 53 emails, whether they are pushed as they arrive or fetched every 15 or 30 minutes, whatever, you still get 53 emails and that's where most of the bandwidth and power is used, fetching those 53 mails.

In simple terms, there's two versions of push email: what's commonly called true push (which includes Gmail) and push via the IMAP_IDLE command, sometimes called faux push (which is not really accurate).

With true push email systems there are two possible setups: Email is actually pushed to your device as it arrives and a notification pops up, or only a SMS notifiction is pushed and pops up and email can be fetched later.

With push via the IMAP_IDLE command, a minimal connection is maintained between the client and server, just kinda keeping in touch. That's why the term 'idle'. When new mail arrives a notification is sent to the email client and the client lets the server know it's ready to receive email. It can then be fetched immediately or later on scheduled downloads.

Disabling push can save some power, but in most cases not a significant, noticeable amount. This is true of both true push email systems such as Gmail and push via the IMAP_IDLE command. Either method uses about the same power. Although true push sounds as if it would be more efficient, unless you get very little email, maybe every couple of days or less, IMAP_IDLE actually is a little more power efficient than true push. It's also slightly faster.

Either push method can give virtually identical results as far as the user can tell. Skipping using any type of push is, for most users, a poor trade-off in lost convenience for the slight power savings.

Edit: Rewritten somewhat for clarity.

Interesting. I find there's a significant difference in leaving my exchange settings on "push" vs hourly, etc. To me it's not so much a power consumption concerns as it is how I management day though. Proactive vs Reactive.

Today, my team and those I work with understand my expectations and interactions throughout the day and I no longer am a slave to email or notifications. I check email and respond to it on my terms usually a handful of times per day. Anything urgent should be communicated via text or in reality a phone call. Thus, I have my work email set to check hourly and personal email ever 4hrs during peak work day hours. Reversed on weekends.

Be aware that polling - disabling IMAP_IDLE and running either manual or scheduled mail checks - is inefficient compared to using IDLE an letting it do the work for you, unless, of course, you run very few mail checks maybe 3-4 a day or less. The IDLE command is really very efficient and well suited for use on mobile devices.

I always leave IMAP_IDLE enabled to get new mail and notifications immediately. I have sync passes set to run every 30 o 60 minutes, just to keep all the folders synced up. I have several accounts on the phone setup this way and power drain is minimal. There's just not much point in doing this stuff manually when it can be done automatically and efficiently. I use AquaMail for this. It's very fast and therefore power-efficient, and very configurable so I can set things just like I want them.

Crashdamage said:

Be aware that polling - disabling IMAP_IDLE and running either manual or scheduled mail checks - is inefficient compared to using IDLE an letting it do the work for you, unless, of course, you run very few mail checks maybe 3-4 a day or less. The IDLE command is really very efficient and well suited for use on mobile devices.

I always leave IMAP_IDLE enabled to get new mail and notifications immediately. I have sync passes set to run every 30 o 60 minutes, just to keep all the folders synced up. I have several accounts on the phone setup this way and power drain is minimal. There's just not much point in doing this stuff manually when it can be done automatically and efficiently. I use AquaMail for this. It's very fast and therefore power-efficient, and very configurable so I can set things just like I want them.

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I'm technical but not a techy, so I don't know what actual settings equate to IMAP_IDLE but I do know that if I set all my accounts to PUSH vs hourly or specific settings and leverage peak/off peak hours that even now with my package disabler and phone optimized it will drain fast.

As I said, I leave Push enabled (aka IMAP_IDLE, that's what Push in IMAP is) at all times. That's to get immediate notifications and message delivery.

I also do a scheduled sync pass every 30 minutes. This runs 24/7 on 4 IMAP accounts, 3 Gmail, 1 private domain. It does not make a major hit on the battery.

It helps that I no longer have to deal with as much email as I used to. I used to get 25-35 a day, sometimes more. Now it's about 10-20 a day. Less email = less time downloading = less power used.

@pdqgp, when you enable Push, it really is using very little power, practically nothing until email arrives and it wakes up to do the download. Again, like I said, I have Push idling along, doing occasional downloads, PLUS running a sync pass every 30 minutes just to keep all the folders in 4 accounts synced. And AquaMail STILL accounts for about only around 2-5% of power usage on a typical day, getting about a dozen emails and sending a few quick replies.

IOW, when you say Push hammers the battery, that says to me that something isn't right. IMHO you need to check your settings. You may have strange things happening like when Push is enabled, it also does mail passes every 2 minutes or something.

Curious... What did you do with the package disabler and what do you mean by "phone optimized"?