Battery drain from mail app. Did you know?

[wakinghour]

Now that apple shows battery usage by app, we can finally pinpoint what is causing battery drain and not just base it on a guess.

I noticed that my iPad Air 2 on iOS 8.1.2 was draining faster than I would expect for an iPad. It's so subtle that it would take a lot of testing to confirm it in the past but now that we have real data we know.

Problem:
It turns out that, in fact, 63% of my battery was being used by the mail app background activity for weeks. My settings were:

Mail > Data Update > Push ON
iCloud (mail sync is off) Push ON
5 mail accounts MANUAL

Solution:
I turned off push and the problem went away.

Questions:
Why would push affect mail, when all my mail were pop 3 accounts that had been set to manual and don't even support push?

What does Push ON mean exactly, when every email/icloud account has it's own separate option? What overrides what? I never found this clear since the first iPod Touch.

Hope this helps anyone who might not even realize they have the problem.

 

[Ultra AleM]

To fix this problem, you could also try to delete and insert again the accounts. Push should not be responsible for battery drain.

 

[jahall05]

I have 2 emails set up. One Outlook account and my school email (it is another Outlook account...365).

I have push turned on. I checked my usage and it shows mail only using 1% of battery.

Interesting that yours is using so much. I wonder what the difference is.

 

[I7guy]

I have push enabled and the mail app was taking about 5%. Wonder what was causing the spike.

 

[iamMacPerson]

6 Plus and Air 2 here. I have 8 accounts (1 iCloud, 1 Outlook, 6 Gmails). The iCloud and Outlook are set to Push, the Gmail accounts are on Fetch Every 15 Minutes on both devices. Mail on my iPhone accounted for 3% of my battery usage, while Mail on my iPad accounted for 5%.

Weird that yours ran away like that. I recommend deleting your accounts and setting them back up.

 

[Jeff R]

I have 2 iCloud emails set up and push on. No effect on battery.
Maybe it's because I don't get too much email.

I keep my Gmail & especially Yahoo away from all my devices. Too much spam.

I don't even check my Hotmail anymore lol!

Slowly migrating all my emails & contacts to iCloud. I've had Yahoo since the 80's but their email just doesn't cut it in todays standards.

Out with the old & in with the new.

 

[wakinghour]

I agree with iamMacPerson and UltraAleM. This is definitely a bug and probably not a Push related issue.

I do recommend you guys check if email is hogging your battery though as I didn't realize it for a while.

 

[newellj]

I have 2 emails set up. One Outlook account and my school email (it is another Outlook account...365).

I have push turned on. I checked my usage and it shows mail only using 1% of battery.

Interesting that yours is using so much. I wonder what the difference is.

I have push enabled and the mail app was taking about 5%. Wonder what was causing the spike.

Agree, my work phone has Outlook configured for push and it gets great battery life. Fetch, on the other hand......I keep turned off.