Develop Bugs

Push email on the google mail application?

I've set up my gmail account with my htc desire and can access my emails fine using the Google mail application (the one with a red M in an envelope). However, to test the push email function, I emailed myself from another account. On my pc, the email arrived instantly, but my desire didn't notify of a new message till almost 15 minutes later.
Is there a setting somewhere that i might have missed - to enable retrieval of emails as they arrive?

shaliru said:
I've set up my gmail account with my htc desire and can access my emails fine using the Google mail application (the one with a red M in an envelope). However, to test the push email function, I emailed myself from another account. On my pc, the email arrived instantly, but my desire didn't notify of a new message till almost 15 minutes later.
Is there a setting somewhere that i might have missed - to enable retrieval of emails as they arrive?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Were you using wifi? Push is really crap over wifi on the desire, the only time I get the push email instantly is when I use mobile data instead.

I was having the same problem and think that it doesnt allow push.
I then set ot up in exchange activesync but im worried about battery life :
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=657065
Hope that is of some use.

EroThraX said:
Were you using wifi? Push is really crap over wifi on the desire, the only time I get the push email instantly is when I use mobile data instead.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yeah I always use mobile data too. I hardly ever use wifi unless I'm downloading something big to my phone such as copilot maps.
Anyway, I've set it up with activesync now and push is working flawlessly. Sometimes I get notified of emails before they even arrive on my pc.
hot-fuzz said:
I was having the same problem and think that it doesnt allow push.
I then set ot up in exchange activesync but im worried about battery life :
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=657065
Hope that is of some use.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
hot-fuzz, I'm gonna start tomorrow with a full charge and have active sync running all day. I'll post my findings here if I observe dramatic decrease in battery life.

got it set up on the one i am using and it seems to work just fine. Emails appear on the phone within seconds of arriving at Gmail.
I do sometimes get periods where it is a bit slower though, i think generally when in a bad signal area where i only have 2G. I'm guessing when it has lower signal or only 2G, it may slow down the checking to save battery power or bandwidth or something....

shaliru said:
hot-fuzz, I'm gonna start tomorrow with a full charge and have active sync running all day. I'll post my findings here if I observe dramatic decrease in battery life.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
That would be very useful. Thinking of doing it myself.
If i have mine setup for every 5 minutes thats 13 times every hour (including on the hour). I need to know if exchange polls take up more battery than checking 13 times an hour, if i get less than 13 emails an hour via exchange (which i do).
hmmmmm

Be interesting what peoples findings are on battery life and different ways to grab email.

I want to get back to the main topic.
I came from HTC Hero where Gmail push (in the gmail app) worked perfect - also on the 2.1 custom roms.
Not on the Desire it does not push the mails instantley. I don't want to go the way over the HTC Mail app...
Anyone has an idea how to fix it?

[Q] K9 mail/push/ Excessive Battery drain

I've been trying to figure out why my battery life diminishes so quickly (stock battery).
In the battery info screen, i discovered my awake time was nearly 50% of my uptime!
Using spareparts, determined that the offending program was k9 mail.
The software is configured for imap push on 2 accounts (both on the same server - served by hostgator). Push is only set to for the inbox folder on each of the accounts. Background sync in k9 settings is set to always. Idle refresh frequency is set at 24 min for each account. Mobile data always on is enabled in the main android network settings (otherwise push doesn't work after the screen is off for 5 min).
When no email is received, awake time goes down, but whenever an email comes in, at least a minute is added to the awake time each time.
In conclusion, it would appear that whenever a push event occurs, k9 does not let the system go back to sleep until at least a minute has elapsed. Why not receive mail, then resume sleep immediately...
Is this lack of resuming sleep a function of the program, or something controlled by k9? Any way to force it back to sleep after the even has occurred?

I thought I'd post some thoughts since it's been a few days.
Digging around here and other forums didn't reveal a whole lot. The bugtracker at the developer's site gave instructions on how to enable logging on the client.
Reviewing the logs, it's clearly obvious that after each session, a wakelock of 60sec is enacted. This is where my awake time runaway is coming from! The more emails I get, the longer it stays awake. For every message received, wake time is incremented by a min. If a new message arrives 61 seconds since the last, awake time will increase by 2 min. This is a cumulative effect which gets worse as more messages are received.
Other clients such as maildroid seem to release the phone back to sleep as soon as the email is received.
I'm hopeful the folks at k9 find a solution for this in the near future. I think the client is one of the better ones with regard for granular configuration. Maildroid does the job, but wasn't a whole lot more robust than the htc client (other than for push support). Seven has some strange validation processes.
I know I can go by way of googlemail, but the accounts in question cannot be forwarded to google. So it leaves with choices.
1) Leave it as is until fixed and let the battery drain continue
2) Still have it setup as IMAP, but disable push altogether - this works, but to get new email, it has to resync the whole folder, which becomes more and more time consuming as the folder grows. A checking interval is set up (poll every x min)
3) similar to 2, but manual polling
4) other suggestions??

gpz1100 said:
4) other suggestions??
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
5) get the source and fix it yourself.
I'm using k9 for 3 accounts and I've never noticed a battery drain.

If I knew how to program I would be all over this.
Unless your accounts are configured for push, and depending on the volume of email you receive, you may not notice this issue.

gpz1100 said:
If I knew how to program I would be all over this.
Unless your accounts are configured for push, and depending on the volume of email you receive, you may not notice this issue.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I definitely use push, but the volume is pretty low.

Between the different accounts, i get a good 100+ mails a day... Easily subtracting nearly 2 hrs of wake time to my battery life when the device isn't really being used.

any updates? I too am facing with the high battery usage of K9, and I do get a lot of emails.
While using gmail client, the battery lasts a lot longer, ~36 hours. With K9, barely 14 hours!

Part of my fix was changing roms. Although both are based on the same ota, the current one doesn't seem to have issues with k9 (or not as much).
You might look into updating to the latest k9 too.. 3.708 is the most current, not on the market though - you need to go to dev's site.

yeah. ROMs it a good notice:
I dont have problems on the CyanogenMod 11 with battery drain

[Q] Android mail eating battery! Please help!

This may have been addressed, but a search didn't reveal anything exactly like this. Please bear in mind that I'm an Android newbie!
I bought the Incredible 2 last Thursday. No rooting, nothing weird, still mostly stock. This morning it's running very slow, screen transitions jerky, etc. and even text based email takes minutes to open. I messed around in settings, and notice that Mail (com.htc.android.mail) is using 48% of my battery, more than twice what the screen is using! I force close, and the phone speeds right up, lag is gone, screen transitions smooth but, minutes later, Mail comes back on line and the phone goes to crap.
I've used more that 1/2 my battery in two hours. I notice that the uptime is 1 hr 58 minutes, and the awake time is 1 hr 44 minutes, so I assume that the mail app is also preventing the phone from sleeping.
Any advise will be greatly appreciated!!

This may sound obvious, but did you try resetting your phone? Turn fastboot off (settings > applications > click fastboot so it is unchecked) then kill mail, and before it has a chance to restart hold the power button, then shut down. The restart option might work, but for things like this I prefer a good old fashioned power down, power up. Anyways, power your phone back on by pushing the power button for two seconds or so. Then see how it goes. This is an error that I have not heard about, but a reset is a universal problem solver. If it doesn't work, tell us what kind of email accounts you have set up (pop, imap, exchange) and how many, and also the settings for checking the mail.
Hopefully the restart will fix it though.
Sent from my Incredible 2 with Xda app

Thanks! My limited Android knowledge told me to try a restart, but I actually didn't know how on the Incredible 2!!
Anyway, the problem went away for a couple hours, then came back!
I use a POP server for my work email, and gmail for personal. I really don't understand this, as nothing has changed since yesterday, but the phone has slowed to a crawl!

Try a third party email app. I don't know of any offhand as I only use gmail on my phone. My gmail account checks my imap account on another host so it's all together, and I can distinguish which account is which on the emails through gmail tags.

Umm I think this will require a factory reset, because you can't uninstall stock mail nor freeze it without root
Sent from my ADR6350 using XDA App

You can temp root, and freeze the stock mail app if that is the way you decide to go. Instructions found here http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1068544. But that sounds more like something faulty with the software, because like I said, I have never heard of that happening before. I would take it back to Verizon, complain incessantly, and point out that you could have fixed it yourself if the phone had an unlocked bootloader
Do you have them set to check mail constantly, push, or are they on a delay? Can you use imap for work instead of pop? I have four accounts set up on mine, including an exchange, and three imap accounts. The fact that it just started happening leads me to believe something broke in the system, though. A factory reset and re-flash may indeed fix the problem. Also, do you have good 3g coverage most of the day? Check your time without signal under battery status in settings. Click on cell standby and it should give it to you. Or are you using wifi most of the day?
Sorry for the rambling questions, just writing stuff out as I think of it. Trying to narrow down what the problem could be.

Thanks, again.
I'm using the mail settings that the school requires, so can't change them. Currently set only to update when the app is opened.
I generally get good cellular reception at work, and I have wifi as well. I've been trying it with or without wifi today, with no changes. I'll try a reset and see if that helps.

I just mentioned trying another app because I don't see these problems and I do not have the stock mail app configured in any way.

RobWoodall said:
Thanks, again.
I'm using the mail settings that the school requires, so can't change them. Currently set only to update when the app is opened.
I generally get good cellular reception at work, and I have wifi as well. I've been trying it with or without wifi today, with no changes. I'll try a reset and see if that helps.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Factory reset should probably fix it
Sent from my ADR6350 using XDA App

RobWoodall said:
This may have been addressed, but a search didn't reveal anything exactly like this. Please bear in mind that I'm an Android newbie!
I bought the Incredible 2 last Thursday. No rooting, nothing weird, still mostly stock. This morning it's running very slow, screen transitions jerky, etc. and even text based email takes minutes to open. I messed around in settings, and notice that Mail (com.htc.android.mail) is using 48% of my battery, more than twice what the screen is using! I force close, and the phone speeds right up, lag is gone, screen transitions smooth but, minutes later, Mail comes back on line and the phone goes to crap.
I've used more that 1/2 my battery in two hours. I notice that the uptime is 1 hr 58 minutes, and the awake time is 1 hr 44 minutes, so I assume that the mail app is also preventing the phone from sleeping.
Any advise will be greatly appreciated!!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I've had the Inc 1 and now the two. I've always turned off the (auto sync) this would require yyou to open your mail and manually refresh or of you use the sync all widget it works that was as well. Seems to save a ton of battery only drawback being you have to manually check it. Ie. No mail notifications. Just a thought maybe you want to give it a shot.

Thanks, everyone. Using a combination of all your advise, the problem is resolved. I factory reset the phone, then installed only my gmail account. This worked fine all of yesterday, so I finally got off my butt and learned how to use gmail to read and send my work email last night. That seems to be working well. I'm still getting email notifications, but gmail is only using 3% of my battery, as opposed to the 48% that Android mail was using.
Still don't know what caused the trouble, but I'm very pleased with the solution.
Thanks again!!

Email battery problem also on Nexus S
I have also the problem that the standard email is consuming the biggest part of the battery - mostly over 50%. I use an exchange account and a pop email, but both not synchronized automatically (manual sync interval), and I do not use them so often - max. one sync a day...
Anyone an idea how to improve this?

Please use the Q&A Forum for questions Thanks
Moving to Q&A

HTC mail has always been a battery drainer for me. I just use the Gmail app.

AgalychnisCallidryas said:
HTC mail has always been a battery drainer for me. I just use the Gmail app.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Or k9 mail....just set the settings to update manually...
Gmail is the only non battery hog.
Sent from my Incredible 2 using xda premium

K-9 Mail
I had also the problem (as mentioned above) with the standard android email programm and a so related short battery life. Since I deleted all email configurations there and installed K-9 mail client instead, battery life improved a lot. Before I could use my phone about 2 days, now it lasts for around 5-6 days...

[Q] Does calendar sync use much battery?

Hope this isn;t too dumb a question. Since the early days of my smartphone use, I always turned off sync's to get better battery life. I think most of us still do that.
If I leave Google Sync for my calendar will it use much juice, or does it just sync if there has been an update?
I've started using my phone more now to maintain my appointments in the field. I could always just sync once at the end of each day.
Just curious.
Thanks for any info.

blcklab said:
Hope this isn;t too dumb a question. Since the early days of my smartphone use, I always turned off sync's to get better battery life. I think most of us still do that.
If I leave Google Sync for my calendar will it use much juice, or does it just sync if there has been an update?
I've started using my phone more now to maintain my appointments in the field. I could always just sync once at the end of each day.
Just curious.
Thanks for any info.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Any sync or push is going to use more battery than if you have it shut off, but I have most of my sync options set fairly conservatively (every 2-3 hours) and I'm getting a full day with steady use (I'm currently using SkyRaider 4.1). I would suggest using a calendar app called Jorte, free in the market. It's a far more robust app and widget than the stock app in my opinion, and has a lot of setting options to customize view and sync.

Mail service (exchange) draining battery?

guys, I've recently noticed that mail_service (from exchange)wakelock drains my battery pretty badly, I've reset the account a few days back and enjoyed quite a bit of good battery life (like 1-2 hrs for 1%, with 3G/data on and auto sync off) for two days,but today the bug came back. I wonder any of you experience this?

There has been reports of battery drain and the Android OS not going to deep sleep properly. However, there's to many factors to take into account.
Some claim that opening and closing the camera app has something to do with it. (CMOS sensor is kept open and active)

fregor said:
There has been reports of battery drain and the Android OS not going to deep sleep properly. However, there's to many factors to take into account.
Some claim that opening and closing the camera app has something to do with it. (CMOS sensor is kept open and active)
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
my Android OS was at 30some%, the betterbatterystats showed mail_service contributed to over 50mins wakelocks while I set manual sync. I am afraid it's another bug that android has.

exchange sucks when it comes to battery life, but I think it's more a protocol thing than an app thing. I did battery tests ages ago on my nexus one, and found exchange sucked up more battery/h than gmail/gtalk/facebook/+++ (basically everything else + phone idle) did combined.
Note that if you dont have exchange on push sync some exchange servers will require a full refresh when you connect. So it'll suck up more battery to sync every hour than having push notifications on. (Although exchange push requires a continously connected encrypted session... which isn't great for battery life either).

nurre said:
exchange sucks when it comes to battery life, but I think it's more a protocol thing than an app thing. I did battery tests ages ago on my nexus one, and found exchange sucked up more battery/h than gmail/gtalk/facebook/+++ (basically everything else + phone idle) did combined.
Note that if you dont have exchange on push sync some exchange servers will require a full refresh when you connect. So it'll suck up more battery to sync every hour than having push notifications on. (Although exchange push requires a continously connected encrypted session... which isn't great for battery life either).
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I've been using exchange since I got my Desire and GS2, but neither one had problem with exchange draining battery (which I didn't find it from betterbatterystats), and even for Galaxy Nexus, this bug is on and off, I hope there's a solution for that

hongkongtom said:
I've been using exchange since I got my Desire and GS2, but neither one had problem with exchange draining battery (which I didn't find it from betterbatterystats), and even for Galaxy Nexus, this bug is on and off, I hope there's a solution for that
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
It never showed up in the battery stats for anything. But if I disabled exchange and left it overnight I'd have WAY better battery/h than I did if I left it on.

nurre said:
It never showed up in the battery stats for anything. But if I disabled exchange and left it overnight I'd have WAY better battery/h than I did if I left it on.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
For disable do u mean freeze/ remove account/ stop auto sync?
Sent from my Galaxy Nexus
ICL53F
4.0.2
Rooted
Stock rom & Recovery

hongkongtom said:
For disable do u mean freeze/ remove account/ stop auto sync?
Sent from my Galaxy Nexus
ICL53F
4.0.2
Rooted
Stock rom & Recovery
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I removed the account, just to be certain it wasn't doing anything. When I added the exchange account I noticed a quite bad drop in battery time, even though it never showed anywhere. So I tested it overnight tons of times with different settings. And the thing that helped me improve my battery time more than anything else was removing exchange.

nurre said:
I removed the account, just to be certain it wasn't doing anything. When I added the exchange account I noticed a quite bad drop in battery time, even though it never showed anywhere. So I tested it overnight tons of times with different settings. And the thing that helped me improve my battery time more than anything else was removing exchange.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
well, that sucks, i need my exchange to get through my job, when exchange is behaving well, i got quite good battery life with 1% drop with 1-2hrs with no tweak (stock 4.0.2), now when exchange bug kicks in 1% would drop in around 15min. i can believe Google can still let it happen when we are already in its 4.0

I had this problem using Enhanced Email, and was able to resolve it by disabling calendar sync for the exchange account. As I understand Enhanced Email to be pretty similar to the stock email application, perhaps you might give that a try and see if it improves the situation.

I suspect the battery usage and best settings depend heavily on exchange server types as well. So do your own testing on this

TheJ0hnman said:
I had this problem using Enhanced Email, and was able to resolve it by disabling calendar sync for the exchange account. As I understand Enhanced Email to be pretty similar to the stock email application, perhaps you might give that a try and see if it improves the situation.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I've tried Enhanced Email and seems it doesn't support calendar sync fot 4.0 just yet. and i really do need calendar sync for my job.
actually, i also bought Touchdown, but too bad that it can't be integrated into phone's calendar, and the calendar viewing is suck for TD. (i really got spoiled by Calendar Pad / Jorte which can display individual events under month view.)

nurre said:
I suspect the battery usage and best settings depend heavily on exchange server types as well. So do your own testing on this
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
i think so too, but i think if i set manual sync the app shouldn't have that much of wake locks which keep my phone awake which drains battery.

I had my exchange account set to only sync email. I also set the check frequency to manual... the exchange service would still suck up a ton of battery. Every few hours I would receive a notification of new email for my exchange account. WTF? Why was it syncing in the background when I had sync set to manual..?
Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using Tapatalk

NPuter said:
I had my exchange account set to only sync email. I also set the check frequency to manual... the exchange service would still suck up a ton of battery. Every few hours I would receive a notification of new email for my exchange account. WTF? Why was it syncing in the background when I had sync set to manual..?
Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using Tapatalk
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Are u using the stock app? I never have this problem you mentioned at the second part.
Sent from my Galaxy Nexus
ICL53F
4.0.2
Rooted & CWM
Stock rom

I had that bug so I removed and re-added my work exchange account and the CPU usage went away after a couple hours of syncing.
Then I downloaded touchdown and haven't gone back to the stock android email client.

Erukian said:
I had that bug so I removed and re-added my work exchange account and the CPU usage went away after a couple hours of syncing.
Then I downloaded touchdown and haven't gone back to the stock android email client.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Sorry I don't understand ur first part? So it had gone to normal after a few hours of syncing you mean?
Done more testing yesterday, after a 12hr working day (no emailing on phone but few calendars added/editted,all time 3G & data on ) , the exchange caused around 500 partial wakelocks (spent around 10min in total) reported by betterbatterystats, causing my phone to drop 1% in around 30min which I've undervolted using JameBond 1.2-307.
Yet, when I got home, I switched to my home Wi-Fi and found that the wakelocks were much less and my battery dropped 1% in around 1.5 to 2hr.
Don't know if the network status from 3G triggered the exchange to drain power from wakelocking.
Sent from my Galaxy Nexus
ICL53F (JameBond 1.2/307)
4.0.2
Rooted & CWM
Stock rom

hongkongtom said:
Sorry I don't understand ur first part? So it had gone to normal after a few hours of syncing you mean?
Done more testing yesterday, after a 12hr working day (no emailing on phone but few calendars added/editted,all time 3G & data on ) , the exchange caused around 500 partial wakelocks (spent around 10min in total) reported by betterbatterystats, causing my phone to drop 1% in around 30min which I've undervolted using JameBond 1.2-307.
Yet, when I got home, I switched to my home Wi-Fi and found that the wakelocks were much less and my battery dropped 1% in around 1.5 to 2hr.
Don't know if the network status from 3G triggered the exchange to drain power from wakelocking.
Sent from my Galaxy Nexus
ICL53F (JameBond 1.2/307)
4.0.2
Rooted & CWM
Stock rom
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
If your undervolted then your battery readout is incorrect anyway. Your battery meter isn't displaying actual battery capacity, it's estimating it based on a scale of power consumption @ X mhz of processor speed within an actual timeframe.
When you undervolt, there's no reference point. Your battery display is somewhat useless. It's why often times the last 10% @ idle seems to last forever.

I have high battery usage from Exchange. It's been a concern of mine for some time. Glad to see others noticing the same thing.
Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using Tapatalk

I am connected to two different Exchange accounts, one 2007 server and one 2010 server. Both set to automatic push. Battery life has been excellent with this phone and getting better. Yesterday, with several phone calls, emails, etc. I clocked in at 1 day 7 hours before I hit the 14% warning threshold.