Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

nburwell

macrumors 603
Original poster
May 6, 2008
5,619
2,504
DE
This could be a completely dumb question, so I apologize in advance. However, what is the difference between having "push" turned on and off? I currently having it off with my iPhone being set at retrieving new data hourly. So if I turn "push" on, what difference, if any, am I going to see?
 
Currently I believe only .mac (mobile me) accounts will push, meaning e-mail is instant whereas services such as gmail (imap and pop) will retrieve data every 15,30,60 minutes. Therefore, unless you have a .mac account having push turned on (I believe) is pointless.
 
This could be a completely dumb question, so I apologize in advance. However, what is the difference between having "push" turned on and off? I currently having it off with my iPhone being set at retrieving new data hourly. So if I turn "push" on, what difference, if any, am I going to see?

If you have Push on, and you have an email account compatible with push, you get your email instantly, because it will be "pushed" to your iPhone.
 
Thanks for the quick replies. I have Gmail, so this basically wouldn't apply to me anyway. So I'm right in having it turned off. Thanks again.
 
Your battery life. My battery life was horrid with push on. I turned it off and my battery lasts a couple of days. Ah, well.
 
Your battery life. My battery life was horrid with push on. I turned it off and my battery lasts a couple of days. Ah, well.

Saying "Turned it off" isn't enough info. You have to explain what you turned it to.

If you turned it from 'push' to 'manual' then yes, your battery life will improve. But if you turned it from 'push' to '15 minutes' it will probably get worse, not better.
 
If you turned it from 'push' to 'manual' then yes, your battery life will improve. But if you turned it from 'push' to '15 minutes' it will probably get worse, not better.

Depends on network conditions. Exchange push uses a sliding-window mechanism for determining the length of time it'll go before sending a heartbeat. If you're in an area with spotty coverage, or if your carrier's NAT is overly-aggressive, it'll end up sending heartbeats quite frequently -- in that case, fetch with a 15 minute interval might present a significant savings.

If, on the other hand, you're in an area with great coverage and your carrier's NAT isn't ******* insane (a term which describes O2's setup perfectly) the interval between heartbeats might be long enough that push will be more efficient than fetch.

As an aside, IMAP IDLE (the protocol extension which Apple for some reason hasn't implemented) only requires a single packet every 29 minutes -- so it's absurdly efficient compared to both DirectPush and IMAP polling.
 
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.