What's push email and how does it affect data?

Fetch = the phone checks for new emails at set intervals.
Push = new emails are pushed from the server to your phone.

Push uses more battery but you get emails instantly.

8317645 said:

I have mine set at manual for now. I tried fetch email, but it fetches too often for my taste. So I'm wondering what Push email does and whether its better for me

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Have you adjusted the polling intervals? If pull is too often then push isn't going to help. Your account may or may not even support push.

matttye said:

Push uses more battery but you get emails instantly.

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It's not quite so black and white. Polling intervals will definitely have an impact on which consumes more.

takeshi74 said:

It's not quite so black and white. Polling intervals will definitely have an impact on which consumes more.

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You are right, but simply having the push notification service listening for updates uses power too - even when none are actually received. I think you'd have to use one of the higher fetch settings to use more power than push!

8317645 said:

I have mine set at manual for now. I tried fetch email, but it fetches too often for my taste. So I'm wondering what Push email does and whether its better for me

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Well then you don't want push because it wants you to have it immediately, wakes up your phone to receive the data.

Change your fetch interval of leave it to manual.

Unless you get tons of email at once that takes 5+ minutes to download, I'd just leave it manual.

Better yet, switch to webmail, that way no need to download anything.

matttye said:

Fetch = the phone checks for new emails at set intervals.
Push = new emails are pushed from the server to your phone.

Push uses more battery but you get emails instantly.

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Correct me if I'm wrong, but wouldn't that depend on how many emails you get? For example, lets say you only received one email in a 1 hour period - If you had fetch set to fetch emails every 10 minutes, wouldn't those 6 fetches use more battery than one push?

mrsir2009 said:

Correct me if I'm wrong, but wouldn't that depend on how many emails you get? For example, lets say you only received one email in a 1 hour period - If you had fetch set to fetch emails every 10 minutes, wouldn't those 6 fetches use more battery than one push?

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Nope. Push keeps a connection to the server alive for periods of time, which uses more battery than completely disconnecting and then reconnecting briefly to 'fetch' mail at a later stage.

Apple themselves suggest using fetch instead of push to save battery life.

Edit:

Long answer - https://discussions.apple.com/thread/1639236?start=0&tstart=0

In practice push usually uses more battery, especially over the mobile network.