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email push vs fetch
- Thread starter Trebuin
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impaler
macrumors 6502
I've seen a few anaylses over the years on this. I think the difference in battery life, as all things, depends on your use case, and your fetch settings (manual, 15 min, 30 min, or hourly).
Generally, push is touted as better on battery life for normal people that email little or moderately, and fetch is better for heavy email users.
My view is push is better for me - I like the instant notification, and allows me to respond faster. Some of my emails come as weather alerts, and would prefer to know now rather than 15 min later. I don't get tons of email, so my iPhone & iPad (and MacBook Air that also depends on battery life) only contact the iCloud mail server when it's ready to receive an email - no polling is done in the background and can only be manually triggered by opening the app or tapping on the refresh button. If I was a heavy receiver of email, I think push would drain me faster by pushing down frequent changes and polling the server perhaps several times a minute. Even switching to Fetch, with a polling every 15 minutes, is better in this circumstance. However, fetch can burn more battery life by polling for email when there may be none.
I think push is the right answer for most folks, with regard to battery life on iOS devices.
Generally, push is touted as better on battery life for normal people that email little or moderately, and fetch is better for heavy email users.
My view is push is better for me - I like the instant notification, and allows me to respond faster. Some of my emails come as weather alerts, and would prefer to know now rather than 15 min later. I don't get tons of email, so my iPhone & iPad (and MacBook Air that also depends on battery life) only contact the iCloud mail server when it's ready to receive an email - no polling is done in the background and can only be manually triggered by opening the app or tapping on the refresh button. If I was a heavy receiver of email, I think push would drain me faster by pushing down frequent changes and polling the server perhaps several times a minute. Even switching to Fetch, with a polling every 15 minutes, is better in this circumstance. However, fetch can burn more battery life by polling for email when there may be none.
I think push is the right answer for most folks, with regard to battery life on iOS devices.
It depends a little on what kind of push-enabled mail account you are using. If it's iCloud mail or gmail using the Gmail app, using push causes very little additional overhead, since it's handled over the same TCP connection as all the other services using Apple Push Notifications. If it's an Exchange account, the overhead will be a little higher since that uses a separate connection.
My guess would be that push is more efficient for most users than fetch with a small(ish) interval (less than an hour or so).
My guess would be that push is more efficient for most users than fetch with a small(ish) interval (less than an hour or so).
impaler
macrumors 6502
I've been testing mailbox and Gmail app strictly as apish indicator and found that I can't even get it to appear on the power usage. I just open up the built in mail when I want to see it. I find gmail works better because it won't alert on ads and also disappears on its own when using another client.
impaler
macrumors 6502
Well, I should clarify - I'm kind of right, kind of wrong. iOS devices use APN, OS X Mail and iCloud servers are set up to use IMAP IDLE, if enabled in Mail settings on the OS X machine.
http://tidbits.com/article/13344
Also explains the technical reason mail count doesn't update automatically on iOS devices after read on other devices or Macs. I have counted others that suggest the mail read count sync is "broken" on iOS. Nope. Power saving.
After enough checking, I'm using the gmail for the alerts/indication, but still using the built in app. It is so much better than mailbox or gmail imho. I would forward to an iCloud account, but that wrecks my spam filters. I'll eventually get it set up, but the fact that gmail does not send alerts on the promotions folder is nice.