Ways to check battery usage?

[Luba]

I went into Settings --> Battery and saw that Mail took up almost 50% of battery usage and The Economist Espresso app took up almost 40%!! I deleted the Economist Espresso app so hopefully my battery on my Xs will last a whole day.

Is that typical that Mail takes up 50% of battery usage? I have Mail fetch my mail every 15 minutes for those email accounts that don't support push.

Any other ways to check battery usage other than going to Settings --> Battery?

 

[BugeyeSTI]

That is not typical for the mail app to use 50%. You might try to delete all your email accounts and then add them one by one..

 

[Luba]

That is not typical for the mail app to use 50%. You might try to delete all your email accounts and then add them one by one..

Yeah, I was thinking that especially when I looked around ‘Battery Usage’ and saw that screen time for Mail was low compared to Mail background time. I have my screen at full brightness (turned off auto-brightness) and thought that having my display at full brightness was mainly the issue. I guess I’ll have to experiment. Turn on auto-brightness to see how much battery I save, then focus on Mail and my email accounts. Maybe I’m getting so much email that Mail in the background is really eating up my battery.

 

[BugeyeSTI]

Yeah, I was thinking that especially when I looked around ‘Battery Usage’ and saw that screen time for Mail was low compared to Mail background time. I have my screen at full brightness (turned off auto-brightness) and thought that having my display at full brightness was mainly the issue. I guess I’ll have to experiment. Turn on auto-brightness to see how much battery I save, then focus on Mail and my email accounts. Maybe I’m getting so much email that Mail in the background is really eating up my battery.

I usually leave my screen brightness around halfway, no auto brightness..

 

[nihil0]

Try to either change PUSH refresh to more time (like 30 minutes or 1 hour) or set it to manual refresh. Probably if you have many accounts it tries to sync them a lot and that drains the battery.

 

[Luba]

Try to either change PUSH refresh to more time (like 30 minutes or 1 hour) or set it to manual refresh. Probably if you have many accounts it tries to sync them a lot and that drains the battery.

It’s set to 1 hour now. It was set to every 15 minutes. Do you think that means I’ll save 4x battery as compared to before? Does it work that way?

Also, simply opening Mail it performs a fresh Pull of emails?

 

[nihil0]

It’s set to 1 hour now. It was set to every 15 minutes. Do you think that means I’ll save 4x battery as compared to before? Does it work that way?

Also, simply opening Mail it performs a fresh Pull of emails?

I don't know whether it works in such way that you save 4x more battery as before, I guess you will need to try to observe it.

Regarding the pull of e-mails, it depends on how your mail provider has the server setup. For me, when I open Mail app on my iPhone, it takes couple of seconds (5-10) to connect to server and pull latest e-mails. Or I can force refresh. I have my fetch (not push because my provider does not use push on his mailserver) set to every 30 minutes and usually when my phone is in idle state I receive e-mails with 20 minutes delay after they were sent.

 

[AxlTJ]

One of the huge battery hogs - email push. It could probably save you more battery life with every hour update.

 

[Luba]

One of the huge battery hogs - email push. It could probably save you more battery life with every hour update.

Yeah, I’ve now set it to Automatic where it updates only when on power. If I need more updates I can just open the Mail app it does a Manual update. I also reduced Display to 75% brightness. And of course got rid of the Economist Espresso app The was active too often in the background. It’s an improvement for sure, but hopefully this will last me the day plus a health margin of say. 20-25%. IOW, I’d like to see that I only use up to 80% of my battery on a typical day.

I did try out the Smart Battery Case for about a week. Definitely enough additional battery power for me. The extra bulk made holding the phone more comfortable. The biggest drawback is the extra weight. I would have kept it, but it turned out to be defective. I’m going to go with the recent tweaks I put in and see how it goes. Maybe getting and using a portable battery pack and/or having a charger around is better than having/carrying the extra weight of the Smart Battery Case??