iPhone Exchange push draining battery

dennarda said:

I am using Exchange for Mail and MobileMe for contacts and calendars. If I set my Exchange account to push, my battery drains in ~4 hours. If I check my usage under settings, the "usage" time is the same as the amount of time that has past since turning on exchange push services. Changing the exchange account sync settings to manual fixes the battery drain problem. I am not having the same problem with MobileMe push services. Is anyone else experiencing this. More importantly, has anyone managed to fix this?

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2G or 3G? I have a 2G iPhone with the 2.0 software and am not experiencing anything similar.

While Im not using Mobile Me, I do have the following:
Exchange Push enabled
GMail IMAP pull every 15 minutes
WiFi on but not connected most of the day
Bluetooth off
Light to medium phone usage

Battery lasts an easy 15-18 hours.

If you're 3G, try leaving push on with 3G off to see if you still see the battery drop.

Same problem

I also have an iPhone 3G and had been having problems with my battery. After a complete charge my phone was out of battery 4-5 hours later without even using it. I went to the apple store and got a replacement thinking the phone was faulty. I set up all my accounts right away and 4 hours later the battery was in red once again. The only thing I could think of was my outlook account was causing the problem, so I went ahead and turned it off. Results: My phone is fully charged and is already 4 hours since I last charged it. So the only thing I can say is: the problem is when you have an exchange account in the iphone, but my guess is the problem is only with exchange 2003 since my husband also has his outlook on the iphone but he doesn’t have this problem, the only difference is he has exchange 2007. Maybe as someone mentioned, it could be a bad configuration on the server side. At least I found what the problem was and now I removed the push option and changed to manual. Let’s see how that turns out.
If you are having the same problem, please share, to see if maybe the problem is with 2003.

To further confuse you all. I generally get ~10 hrs of moderate usage out of the following settings:

push: on (exchange 2003 and mobileme)
auto-retrieve: every 15 min (for gmail and an att acct)
3g: on

My only thing off is wifi and my brightness is turned way down (NIB torch mode hurts my eyes)

For me push (w/ exchange) via 3G consumes a LOT more battery than push (w/ exchnage) via EDGE. The difference is drastic. I know that doesn't shed any light, but just another data point.

I have a BB Pearl issued by my job and it can only use EDGE. My iPhone battery usage is BETTER than my BB Pearl when I use EDGE (or WiFi) for email. When I use 3G it goes south quickly. Maybe it has a lot to do with the phone "struggling" with the 3G connection.

i also only get about 5 hours with push on (edge, no wifi, no gps, other email accts on a 15 minute check interval).

today i turned it on for a meeting at 330pm, for 2.5 hours, and lost more than 50% of my remaining battery (which started at about 90%, after having been unplugged from 830am to 330pm).

My battery life has been really iconsistent since I started using Exchange push. Most days, I leave the house with a fully-charged battery and by the time I get home 10 hours later, the battery is still over 50%. But some days, I'll be at 10 or 20% by some time in the afternoon. (Today it was 20% at 2:30 p.m., when I unplugged the phone from its charger at 8:30 a.m.) There are not unusual volumes of e-mail being pushed on the days when I have reduced battery life, and I'm not using the phone in any unusual way on those days. I just can't figure it out. (And I'm using Edge during the day, with GPS turned off.)

It's very annoying -- even more so since I'm supposed to be testing the iPhone for work purposes for my firm. If I can't find the solution to this, I'm not sure I'll be able to recommend its adoption on a firm-wide basis. (Our managing partner has expressed interest in letting people choose between the iPhone and our current Blackberries, provided no major obstacles pop up in the month or so I'll be using my iPhone.)

I had similar issues with the old phone with the software upgrade. The battery got so hot i had to sit it on the table at the apple store and they gave me a new one. I went back 1 week later with the exact same problem. I turned off the push and bluetooth and the life cycle is longer... Definitely a software issue...

Same Issue

applefan28 said:

I also have an iPhone 3G and had been having problems with my battery. After a complete charge my phone was out of battery 4-5 hours later without even using it. I went to the apple store and got a replacement thinking the phone was faulty. I set up all my accounts right away and 4 hours later the battery was in red once again. The only thing I could think of was my outlook account was causing the problem, so I went ahead and turned it off. Results: My phone is fully charged and is already 4 hours since I last charged it. So the only thing I can say is: the problem is when you have an exchange account in the iphone, but my guess is the problem is only with exchange 2003 since my husband also has his outlook on the iphone but he doesn’t have this problem, the only difference is he has exchange 2007. Maybe as someone mentioned, it could be a bad configuration on the server side. At least I found what the problem was and now I removed the push option and changed to manual. Let’s see how that turns out.
If you are having the same problem, please share, to see if maybe the problem is with 2003.

Click to expand...

I am also having this issue. Exactly!! Problem is that it was not happening a week ago. Initially I was getting an all day charge while using Push on Exchange 2003, also using Push on MobileME and 15 min pull for Gmail. I was not having any issues until last week. Suddenly I am getting 3 - 4 hours tops out of the battery. I think it is very strange because I, too, am seeing the Usage and the Standby time the exact same. That is very odd.

Exchange Calendar

I just read on an Apple Forum that many that are experiencing this same issue are finding it actually tied to the Calendar Push. One user noted that Iphone and Exchange might not deal with "all day events" the same and that could be causing an issue. Some said that by leaving Push on for email and contacts, but turning off Push Calendar, solved the issue.

Just something more for me to try and test now to eliminate this 3 - 4 total drain issue!!!

Has anyone noticed any increased battery life with the latest sotware update? I was not having this problem with "push"drain a week ago, however, when I turned it off, I made it 19 hours with no problem. The standby and usage counter is no longer the same. I want push, but it seems to be a big sacrafice!!! Any one else having the same issue???

Battery drain

I am still having intermediate issues with battery drain. It is not consistant though. I turned off the push from day one. The only way i found to stop the drain is to reset the phone every day after it has been on for about 1 hour. I have changed every setting that could affect the performance but still have the problem. I just upped the OS to 2.0.2 so the jury is still out. The reception is horrible in comparison to my old 2g phone. Dropping many calls. Although i am down to about 30% dropping now, versus 75% 2 weeks ago.

the fix

the fix for me was to delete the exchange account from the phone, and then re-add it (make sure not to make any mistakes). now i get normal life with push turned on.

chrisk said:

the fix for me was to delete the exchange account from the phone, and then re-add it (make sure not to make any mistakes). now i get normal life with push turned on.

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Yes, that worked for me too!!! Thanks to you and your other post my phone is back to normal!!! My phone had been working fine and then while at the lake over the weekend this started. Once I deleted the account and re-entered the information, everythign went back to normal! I still see both the usage and standby counters stay the same while using push, but I am getting about 10 hours on the phone with it on!

Corruption in Mailbox

dennarda said:

I am using Exchange for Mail and MobileMe for contacts and calendars. If I set my Exchange account to push, my battery drains in ~4 hours. If I check my usage under settings, the "usage" time is the same as the amount of time that has past since turning on exchange push services. Changing the exchange account sync settings to manual fixes the battery drain problem. I am not having the same problem with MobileMe push services. Is anyone else experiencing this. More importantly, has anyone managed to fix this?

Click to expand...

This may be due to corruption in your Exchange Mailbox. I had the same problem with a huge mailbox and the only way to resolve it was to create a new Exchange mailbox for my AD user account, and migrate only the email I needed. Then I had to delete the account from my iPhone and create it again. Once I did this, my battery life extended by about 4 times, and I no longer see standby time equal to usage time, nor is the device slightly warm even when in standby. Apple support had no clue about this - they just kept replacing my phone!

3gs 3.1.3 exchange push not working / causing major battery drain

Hello,

I am exp. the same issues with a 3gs. I feel that my company has a bad configuration with the server, but I am not technical enough to know what could be changed, nor does our tech support.

My 3gs with the latest software upgrade 3.1.3 is not working anymore with the push 2007 exchange server. It did work at one time, but then our office made some hardware upgrades and nobody can figure out what is not allowing the iphones to not support the service.

What happens is my phone will not recieve email/calendar notifications with push activated on the phone - when i enter into the application it downloads all my mail and items. My battery life has been severely affected by this >4hrs on a full charge. Which includes a complete de-charge in standby mode. Apple gave me another phone after testing the battery life thinking it was faulty, but i experience the same issues with the new phone.

I have tried deleting the exchange account, I have tried to install with mail only and no calendar... but all of my actions have proven to be unsuccessfull. Also anyone in my office with an Iphone is experiencing the same issues.

Is anyone good with servers to know what I can tell my tech support guy to assist me with this problem?

Thanks - Mike

I know this post is kind of old but my account got moved to Exchange 2007 last week and then I noticed my battery dying in front of my eyes.

I was also having no end of problems with calls dropping out. That night I restored my phone to factory thinking it might have been a rogue app. I couldn't setup my Exchange account because they hadn't set up webmail to access the Exchange 2007 accounts (we are still on Exchange 2003). As soon as they got webmail access sorted I setup my Exchange 2007 account again and bam... battery started draining again.

I'm currently charging my phone but I've set Exchange to be manual and see how that goes. It's kind of nice to have confirmation of what I thought was the problem. I'll have a word to our server boys and see if there are settings that can be turned off on the server end to alleviate the problem.

How quickly your firewall closes idle connections is also a factor. Ours was initially set to 3 minutes, and battery life with Push enabled was horrendous, no matter the device (iPhone, WinMo, WebOS). Switched it to 15 minutes and everyone's battery life immediately tripled.

Apparently the firewall was sending RSTs, and the phone was immediately opening a new data connection. This happened 20 times per hour, where it was supposed to happen 4 times. That just brutalized the battery.

fixed issue with iphone push battery drain

I spent hours on this issue with no success, and just now finally got it fixed from the exchange side, so figured I should share and save someone else the headache.
description of problem:
all of a sudden users of iPhone that were getting 10+ hours of battery get 3 hours of battery life.
exchange email push is enabled on iphone
exchange 2003 server was running AVG enterprise (this may be the root problem, associated with a MS patch to Exchange virusscan)

things that did NOT work for me but saw suggested and may work elsewhere:
modify heartbeat min/max settings for activesync
increase idle-disconnect time for https connection on firewall
remove settings from iphone and reconfigure
reset phone
remove account associations to active-sync on exchange server and recreate
clean up calendar appointments in outlook
checked for mailbox corruption

fix that worked (on exchange server, no ISA):
1.) check the below mentioned registry and found its value set to 0 (disabled).
HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\MsExchangeIS\VirusScan\
BackGround Scanning and ProActive Scanning.
2.) set the values to 1 for both.
3.) gracefully dismounted the Mailbox and Public Folder stores and restarted Microsoft Exchange Information Store Services.

Marc Friesen

Me too!

sneakyob said:

Yes, that worked for me too!!! Thanks to you and your other post my phone is back to normal!!! My phone had been working fine and then while at the lake over the weekend this started. Once I deleted the account and re-entered the information, everythign went back to normal! I still see both the usage and standby counters stay the same while using push, but I am getting about 10 hours on the phone with it on!

Click to expand...

This worked for me too! I use Exchange, Mobile Me, and a third party email account. When I first added Exchange, my battery drained in less than 2 hours!!! I thought I'd have to get a bulky battery case to extend my usage, but after reading this post and deleting the account and re-adding it, it seems like my battery life is longer than it was before Exchange (which would be really weird!). I push email, calendars, and contacts on Exchange. My phone lasts all day. I re-charge each night and I'm ready to go as normal.

gMail & Hotmail PUSH = dead battery

dennarda said:

I am using Exchange for Mail and MobileMe for contacts and calendars. If I set my Exchange account to push, my battery drains in ~4 hours. If I check my usage under settings, the "usage" time is the same as the amount of time that has past since turning on exchange push services. Changing the exchange account sync settings to manual fixes the battery drain problem. I am not having the same problem with MobileMe push services. Is anyone else experiencing this. More importantly, has anyone managed to fix this?

Click to expand...

I was using push with gMail and Hotmail and was seeing the percentage drop quite rapidly. I've since set PUSH off and use pull every 15 minutes and the battery drain has decreased dramatically. I'll have to check if it's gMail or Hotmail that's causing this as I'd like to use PUSH but not if the battery gets caned!

AVG for Exchange and battery drain

When we first installed AVG for Exchange on our mail servers, we had this problem.
The fix:
Under resident shield, exclude directories containing information stores and transaction logs.
Under E-mail scanner for MS Exchange:
- un-check background scan (scans messages when phone requests them causing timeout)
- Check Proactive scan (scans messages when they are put into the mailbox)
This worked for several weeks. Now this weekend we started seeing the problem on some (but not all) phones. Any other suggestions would be welcome.
Dan

exchange account seems to ALWAYS need connection

http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Google+Mobile/thread?tid=5058442512328222&hl=en