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roeiboot

macrumors regular
Original poster
Jul 19, 2009
148
6
i read at several places to preserve battery to turn push OFF, i have to ass-u-me it's better for the battery life than fetch.

so far i have 1 MobileMe address + 1 personal account used only for sending.

iPhone 3g - v3. - JB.
 
For the iPhone it is better to have Push set to OFF because technically, the iPhone doesn't actually have push except for your @me.com account. You see, everything beyond that is actually a Fetch account that's pretending to be push in that you can tell the iPhone how often you want to check it for email (which seems as though the fastest number is every 15 minutes).

Coming from a BlackBerry this is pretty gay for me and I have since then re-activated my BlackBerry and don't use the iPhone for email at all. The BlackBerry actually has 'real' push email for all email accounts and checks and delivers everything instantaneously and doesn't pretend to push email by telling your email software to check for email every x amount of minutes.

If speed is not a concern for you just turn it off and you'll get better battery life at the cost of having to open your mail app to actually check for email.
 
i also had (and still have) a BlackBerry... and sure, nothing compares to them mail wise... still undecided on to push or to fetch :}
 
Well, if push is set to off, then you can't use the "Find my iPhone" feature.
 
-?-

i'm trying to understand how push can use more battery then a set poll/fetch every let's say half an hour..

i do NOT want to open my mail app just to see if there's mail.
 
i'm trying to understand how push can use more battery then a set poll/fetch every let's say half an hour..

i do NOT want to open my mail app just to see if there's mail.

agreed without refreshing my email on the computer my iphone tells me if i have mail before my computer does. I love the push and my battery doesnt drain much at all. Charged it last night with 6 hours of use and 36 hours standby it was at 22%, more then enough battery for myself.
 
i'm trying to understand how push can use more battery then a set poll/fetch every let's say half an hour..

i do NOT want to open my mail app just to see if there's mail.

Fetch doesn't cause you to open your email every half hour or whatever frequency you have it set. If you have an email, it lets you know; if not, then nothing. It's all I use.
 
i'm trying to understand how push can use more battery then a set poll/fetch every let's say half an hour..

i do NOT want to open my mail app just to see if there's mail.

Push uses LESS battery than Fetch because Apple's cloud (or for a BlackBerry, it would be RIM's BlackBerry Internet Service... their entire infrastructure) is what is checking for email. As it finds emails (as they are sent) it just pushes it into your iPhone. In other words, the iPhone or BlackBerry doesn't really do anything to receive email when email is pushed.

Fetch, on the other hand, the device is actually doing the work. Imagine sitting in front of your company and every 15 minutes you have to open Outlook/Entourage/Mail and press the send/receive button to get your email. That's what Fetch is doing, so it's creating a process on your iPhone - which in turn is using battery and it will do that every X amount of minutes regardless of whether or not you get an email. Even worse, Fetch is horribly inaccurate. I get emails hours later half the time.

What you're confused on is that people are telling you to turn push OFF. But, Apple allows you to tell your iPhone to check for email every X amount of minutes and APPLE (being the retarded geniuses they are) called that feature "PUSH" when you do that. The only REAL PUSH email for an iPhone is @me.com and Yahoo and Apple simply allows you to tell all other email accounts to make the FETCH feature PRETEND to be PUSH. Confusing, I know, but you can thank Apple for that one for complicating things up.

In other words, if it's not @me.com or @yahoo/ymail/rocketmail (all of Yahoo's email extensions) turning push OFF improves battery because no other email account is technically push anyway. You're just telling Fetch (which requires that you open mail to check for email) to push (telling your email to check every x amount of minutes) your email, which in turn is draining your battery.

Does that answer your question?
 
Push uses LESS battery than Fetch because Apple's cloud (or for a BlackBerry, it would be RIM's BlackBerry Internet Service... their entire infrastructure) is what is checking for email. As it finds emails (as they are sent) it just pushes it into your iPhone. In other words, the iPhone or BlackBerry doesn't really do anything to receive email when email is pushed.

Fetch, on the other hand, the device is actually doing the work. Imagine sitting in front of your company and every 15 minutes you have to open Outlook/Entourage/Mail and press the send/receive button to get your email. That's what Fetch is doing, so it's creating a process on your iPhone - which in turn is using battery and it will do that every X amount of minutes regardless of whether or not you get an email. Even worse, Fetch is horribly inaccurate. I get emails hours later half the time.
What you're confused on is that people are telling you to turn push OFF. But, Apple allows you to tell your iPhone to check for email every X amount of minutes and APPLE (being the retarded geniuses they are) called that feature "PUSH" when you do that. The only REAL PUSH email for an iPhone is @me.com and Yahoo and Apple simply allows you to tell all other email accounts to make the FETCH feature PRETEND to be PUSH. Confusing, I know, but you can thank Apple for that one for complicating things up.

In other words, if it's not @me.com or @yahoo/ymail/rocketmail (all of Yahoo's email extensions) turning push OFF improves battery because no other email account is technically push anyway. You're just telling Fetch (which requires that you open mail to check for email) to push (telling your email to check every x amount of minutes) your email, which in turn is draining your battery.

Does that answer your question?

Okay, maybe I'm slow, but you need to explain things again here. First, a comment: I get my fetched emails almost immediately. I don't see any inaccuracies at all. So, I don't understand the second bold above. I don't have to open email to check for email. I get a tone and a vibrate, and I see that I have an email. Yes, I open it to read it, but I don't have to open it to check that I have one.
 
Fetch doesn't cause you to open your email every half hour or whatever frequency you have it set. If you have an email, it lets you know; if not, then nothing. It's all I use.

i'm well aware what push is, had and still have a BlackBerry Storm :}
 
Whatever what you guys are saying, the fact is that at least for me, turning off Push email more than doubled the battery life on my 3GS.

I had three email accounts with push turned on: a mobileme, gmail and Exchange account.

With Push turned on, I could barely get trough half of my day (that means about 6 hours) before my iPhone was completely discharged. I could see the battery percentage digits go down every other minute.

With push turned off, not only can I get trough all of my day with a single charge, but when I go to sleep at night I still have more than 50% left.

Maybe it's a bug and it's not supposed to be that bad, but that was my experience.
 
Okay, maybe I'm slow, but you need to explain things again here. First, a comment: I get my fetched emails almost immediately. I don't see any inaccuracies at all. So, I don't understand the second bold above. I don't have to open email to check for email. I get a tone and a vibrate, and I see that I have an email. Yes, I open it to read it, but I don't have to open it to check that I have one.

Will do you one even better. See attached photo. This is the Push setting screen on your iPhone. Now, this setting is ONLY for @me.com or @yahoo.com. Turning Push to OFF here just means that those two email accounts will no longer push your email from the cloud/server.

Every other type of email account though is a Fetch email. By default I think the Fetch setting is set to check every 15 minutes so that way you get your email without having to open Mail and you think the email is actually being pushed (when in actuality it's being pulled by the phone), but this drains your battery (also pointed out in the screenshot) because your phone is checking for email and not the Cloud (as is done for @me and @yahoo). Changing Fetch to manually means you have to open Mail to get your email or changing it to every 30 minutes or hourly will give you better battery life at the cost of speed.

Hopefully that cleared things up.
 

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well....

it appears to vary per device (something i really noticed with the BB Storm - which i just had unlocked..) anyway, different devices respond different to certain things....

that being said, i'm still baffled and hesitant to add more email addresses on my iPhone because of the reply issue, for the one @me.com email address i set up another account to be able to send from, and deleted the password so it does not fetch mail, ever.. is there really no better method ?

in short, use @me.com for mail ot be pushed to iPhone...
use other email address as reply from..
 
Will do you one even better. See attached photo. This is the Push setting screen on your iPhone. Now, this setting is ONLY for @me.com or @yahoo.com. Turning Push to OFF here just means that those two email accounts will no longer push your email from the cloud/server.

Every other type of email account though is a Fetch email. By default I think the Fetch setting is set to check every 15 minutes so that way you get your email without having to open Mail and you think the email is actually being pushed (when in actuality it's being pulled by the phone), but this drains your battery (also pointed out in the screenshot) because your phone is checking for email and not the Cloud (as is done for @me and @yahoo). Changing Fetch to manually means you have to open Mail to get your email or changing it to every 30 minutes or hourly will give you better battery life at the cost of speed.

Hopefully that cleared things up.

Okay, well I use Yahoo and use fetch, not push.
 
that being said, i'm still baffled and hesitant to add more email addresses on my iPhone because of the reply issue, for the one @me.com email address i set up another account to be able to send from, and deleted the password so it does not fetch mail, ever.. is there really no better method ?
Not sure if just removing the password is enough. After setting up my OUTGOING Accounts I go back in and REMOVE all of the incomming settings (not just the password). Not sure if this is needed, but I wanted to make sure it was not checking for email and then failing on the password. I don't want it to do ANY POP3 logic.
 
Okay, well I use Yahoo and use fetch, not push.
I read your other posts as well as this one. You said your email was being delivered almost immediately. That is Push and not Fetch. If you are Fetching every 15 minutes then you would be notified of new mail once every 15 min. If not, then you must be checking email more frequently which would use more battery or you are mistaken and it is really doing Push. The default for Yahoo is Push.
 
I read your other posts as well as this one. You said your email was being delivered almost immediately. That is Push and not Fetch. If you are Fetching every 15 minutes then you would be notified of new mail once every 15 min. If not, then you must be checking email more frequently which would use more battery or you are mistaken and it is really doing Push. The default for Yahoo is Push.

I understand (I think), but I have push OFF and fetch every hour. I didn't mean I get it immediately, but I get it frequently enough. Do I have this all confused?
 
Not sure if just removing the password is enough. After setting up my OUTGOING Accounts I go back in and REMOVE all of the incomming settings (not just the password). Not sure if this is needed, but I wanted to make sure it was not checking for email and then failing on the password. I don't want it to do ANY POP3 logic.

i just did that as well.... if i look at the servers in that account i have 3 the same, one i use and 2 that are not used as far as i know, can't find how to get rid of them (yea, i'm anal like that :}

tks.
 
I understand (I think), but I have push OFF and fetch every hour. I didn't mean I get it immediately, but I get it frequently enough. Do I have this all confused?
I assume you understand it. But, if you have Fetch for every hour then you should not be notified of at any time < 1 hour unless you go into the Mail Application. Do you agree? Again, you are saying you want the iPhone to connect to your mail server once per hour. This is very easy to test. Use your desktop computer. Have someone send an email to your Yahoo Account (or use another mail account yourself). Now login in to Yahoo Web Interface. Do you see the email? If so, then check your iPhone (without going into the mail applicaiton). If you see it hit quickly then you are not doing Fetch every hour. Also, you would have to have a feel for when the 1 hour starts. I.E. Do this right after you receive email.
 
I assume you understand it. But, if you have Fetch for every hour then you should not be notified of at any time < 1 hour unless you go into the Mail Application. Do you agree? Again, you are saying you want the iPhone to connect to your mail server once per hour. This is very easy to test. Use your desktop computer. Have someone send an email to your Yahoo Account (or use another mail account yourself). Now login in to Yahoo Web Interface. Do you see the email? If so, then check your iPhone (without going into the mail applicaiton). If you see it hit quickly then you are not doing Fetch every hour. Also, you would have to have a feel for when the 1 hour starts. I.E. Do this right after you receive email.

Well, here are the times I got for a series of emails I got sent (numbers are in minutes):

36
71
3
34
22
17
25

Each of these tests I sent the email and then determined how much time it took to notify me I had an email on the iPhone. My fetch is set for an hour (obviously it wasn't an hour for each, since the times are less than that), but my push is off. However, you said push was auto for Yahoo, so why all the different times? What's going on?
 
However, you said push was auto for Yahoo, so why all the different times? What's going on?

Simple answer: Yahoo is far from perfect. Yahoo routes mail through servers for push. It's a free service they offer, so it's not without it's hangups. I've only had my iPhone for maybe a little over a week and have had the Yahoo account the same amount of time (created it when I realized Gmail sucks on the iPhone) and all I've been doing over the past few days is test mails to Yahoo to determine speed. Sometimes it's within seconds, but sometimes it's minutes or a while later and I'm not just talking about the iPhone. I will send an email to Yahoo and log in to their site and their site won't get the email for a while sometimes either. The iPhone seems to grab the email within a minute or so of Yahoo actually getting it, but the speed issues are simply Yahoo's services not being as good as they should be.
 
Simple answer: Yahoo is far from perfect. Yahoo routes mail through servers for push. It's a free service they offer, so it's not without it's hangups. I've only had my iPhone for maybe a little over a week and have had the Yahoo account the same amount of time (created it when I realized Gmail sucks on the iPhone) and all I've been doing over the past few days is test mails to Yahoo to determine speed. Sometimes it's within seconds, but sometimes it's minutes or a while later and I'm not just talking about the iPhone. I will send an email to Yahoo and log in to their site and their site won't get the email for a while sometimes either. The iPhone seems to grab the email within a minute or so of Yahoo actually getting it, but the speed issues are simply Yahoo's services not being as good as they should be.

So, since fetch isn't used for yahoo, should I just set fetch to manual? I also use hotmail.
 
So, since fetch isn't used for yahoo, should I just set fetch to manual? I also use hotmail.

as long as you don't mind having to open Mail to check for mail. I have mine set to manual for my other accounts besides Yahoo since for the most part I just have everything forward to my Yahoo account and only have one other account that I didn't want to forward, but it doesn't get anything that's time sensitive so I just check it whenever. I got a little bit better battery life setting it to manual for the other account.
 
Not sure if just removing the password is enough. After setting up my OUTGOING Accounts I go back in and REMOVE all of the incomming settings (not just the password). Not sure if this is needed, but I wanted to make sure it was not checking for email and then failing on the password. I don't want it to do ANY POP3 logic.

in the one account i have a empyt password, server and username fields.... just created another one (long overdue) and can't leave the password field empty (i'm anal like that... i want it empty)

could it be because 1 is imap, and the other is pop3 ?

ps. i am able to sent mail from both accounts.
 
I assume you understand it. But, if you have Fetch for every hour then you should not be notified of at any time < 1 hour unless you go into the Mail Application. Do you agree? Again, you are saying you want the iPhone to connect to your mail server once per hour. This is very easy to test. Use your desktop computer. Have someone send an email to your Yahoo Account (or use another mail account yourself). Now login in to Yahoo Web Interface. Do you see the email? If so, then check your iPhone (without going into the mail applicaiton). If you see it hit quickly then you are not doing Fetch every hour. Also, you would have to have a feel for when the 1 hour starts. I.E. Do this right after you receive email.

Since discussing this topic, I've discovered that Yahoo is not auto push. It's in the settings>mail>fetch new data>advanced>push or fetch.
 
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