Hello all.
I own an HTC Fuze and I'm crazy about it. I'm really glad I decided to go with it over an iPhone.
I have two e-mail accounts, both of which I access via a webmail interface because I don't like having my e-mails downloaded onto a computer. I'd much rather be able to access them anywhere, and have the protected in case of a computer crash. In addition to accessing my e-mail via web interface, I also like to have my phone check for new e-mails and download them (without deleting them from the e-mail server). That way if I'm away from a computer I can have access to all my e-mails, but those same e-mails are still sitting safely on the e-mail server.
My primary e-mail is a premium membership Yahoo account. My secondary e-mail, which a very distant second in importance and frankly I could live without, is through a private web hosting company that I have a website on.
I set up my Fuze to access both of those e-mail accounts using the e-mail client that comes installed on it. Initially I set up both accounts to be checked for new e-mails every 30 minutes. The problem is, with two e-mail accounts being checked every half hour each, the drain on the device's battery life is considerable (I have the e-mail client set to download all e-mails in their entirety including attachments).
Is there a way (via a different set-up option, a 3rd-party e-mail client, or whatever) that I can have my two e-mail servers notify my phone when there is pending e-mail rather than have my phone constantly reaching out and checking for e-mail that might not even be there and draining down my battery?
On a semi-related note, the area I live in for some reason does not yet have 3G. A town about 8 miles from here has 3G, so I assume it's "coming soon." So another side effect of the way my e-mail is set up is that if someone tries to call me while my phone is checking for e-mails they get shunted right to voice mail and I miss the call.
Thanks in advance for any advice.
Jamie
Jamie,
I'm pretty much in the same situation as you (2 accounts, battery drain, 3G coming soon). The only solution I found was a combination of :
1) Primary email account to be checked frequently (5 mins - 10 mins interval)
2) Secondary email account to be checked once a day (or perhaps every 4 hours)
3) Charge often (I have a USB cable connected at my office desk), ignoring effect on battery life
4) Manually turn off email checking (or reduce frequency) during the night and weekends, so as to get freedom from charging
The problem is bad, and I'm seriously considering getting a cheap blackberry to handle emails (especially primary account) and leaving my Fuze/Touch Pro to be my main phone/messaging/surfing device.
On the other issue, I don't face that problem. If a call comes in while my phone is checking email, the data connection is dropped and instead the voice call comes through. The difference though, is that I don't have any voice mail...
Hope that helps.
CUGWMUI
I have been using a program called Seven ( www.seven.com ) to take care of e-mails. It is a program that pushes your e-mails to your mobile outlook. I use it with gmail although yahoo also appears to be supported. From what I understand, maintaining a constant data connection with push is actually less battery intensive and uses less data than signing on every 15 minutes or so to do a scheduled check.
I used to use IMAP instead of POP with gmail and that took care of the problem of e-mails getting taken off the server. I believe that Seven uses IMAP as well because its function seems to be the same. Any e-mails I read on the phone are marked as read on the server and vice versa. I believe you can set it to not delete from the server if you delete an e-mail on the phone, but I honestly do not delete e-mails from my phone. On its own and also with Seven, Pocket Outlook can be set to only show e-mails from a certain number of days. I have mine set to 5 days. Any e-mails from before that simply do not show up on the phone. As a result, you never have to worry about cleaning up your inbox on the phone. At least, I don't have to, but if you have an extreme volume of e-mail, you may have to even if you only have it set to 5 days.
Also you can set Seven to stop pushing at night or on weekend days as well. My Fuze is on the charger at night but it is nice to not have to hear the e-mail ding when automated e-mails come in at 3am.
I haven't had my Fuze very long, but with my Tilt I recall one day where I didn't make a single phone call, so Seven was the only thing running all day. I still had 90% battery life left after over 12 hours of being off the charger. I haven't been able to do such a test on my Fuze over an entire day, but from what I've seen I believe it is about the same.
The thing I noticed on the Fuze which drains the battery the most is doing anything where the screen is on. Obviously powering and lighting that beautiful VGA screen has its cost. I do have a program that adjusts the backlight better than the stock WM function called G-Light, it lets you set the backlight brightness based on the reading from the light sensor. The lower the light level it detects, the lower the backlight is set to. The stock settings are pretty conservative with the brightness so I believe it will help battery life some while I am using the phone.
pennywisdom said:
I have been using a program called Seven ( www.seven.com ) to take care of e-mails. It is a program that pushes your e-mails to your mobile outlook. I use it with gmail although yahoo also appears to be supported. From what I understand, maintaining a constant data connection with push is actually less battery intensive and uses less data than signing on every 15 minutes or so to do a scheduled check.
I used to use IMAP instead of POP with gmail and that took care of the problem of e-mails getting taken off the server. I believe that Seven uses IMAP as well because its function seems to be the same. Any e-mails I read on the phone are marked as read on the server and vice versa. I believe you can set it to not delete from the server if you delete an e-mail on the phone, but I honestly do not delete e-mails from my phone. On its own and also with Seven, Pocket Outlook can be set to only show e-mails from a certain number of days. I have mine set to 5 days. Any e-mails from before that simply do not show up on the phone. As a result, you never have to worry about cleaning up your inbox on the phone. At least, I don't have to, but if you have an extreme volume of e-mail, you may have to even if you only have it set to 5 days.
Also you can set Seven to stop pushing at night or on weekend days as well. My Fuze is on the charger at night but it is nice to not have to hear the e-mail ding when automated e-mails come in at 3am.
I haven't had my Fuze very long, but with my Tilt I recall one day where I didn't make a single phone call, so Seven was the only thing running all day. I still had 90% battery life left after over 12 hours of being off the charger. I haven't been able to do such a test on my Fuze over an entire day, but from what I've seen I believe it is about the same.
The thing I noticed on the Fuze which drains the battery the most is doing anything where the screen is on. Obviously powering and lighting that beautiful VGA screen has its cost. I do have a program that adjusts the backlight better than the stock WM function called G-Light, it lets you set the backlight brightness based on the reading from the light sensor. The lower the light level it detects, the lower the backlight is set to. The stock settings are pretty conservative with the brightness so I believe it will help battery life some while I am using the phone.
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i love when people get here before me !!! great post on one of my favorite apps :]]]]]] !!!!
First, thank you very much for the response.
Second, I checked into www.seven.com and it seems to indicate that Seven is offered through AT&T via Xpress Mail. I downloaded Xpress Mail and set it up for my Yahoo account, but it seems to have even less customization and control than the built-in e-mail client that came with the Fuze. It won't allow me to change any options, instead referring me to "Xpress Mail Settings" to change option. The Xpress Mail settings program offers virtually no choices whatsoever. I can turn Push off or on, and that's pretty much it.
Can you offer any words of wisdom on how I can customize the functionality?
Thanks much in advance.
Jamie
jayla said:
First, thank you very much for the response.
Second, I checked into www.seven.com and it seems to indicate that Seven is offered through AT&T via Xpress Mail. I downloaded Xpress Mail and set it up for my Yahoo account, but it seems to have even less customization and control than the built-in e-mail client that came with the Fuze. It won't allow me to change any options, instead referring me to "Xpress Mail Settings" to change option. The Xpress Mail settings program offers virtually no choices whatsoever. I can turn Push off or on, and that's pretty much it.
Can you offer any words of wisdom on how I can customize the functionality?
Thanks much in advance.
Jamie
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Ooh no that's not what you want to do. Seven works just fine through Pocket Outlook, there is no need to get another program.
Simply install Seven onto the phone, then run it. It should walk you through setup and you can choose Yahoo as your e-mail provider. Since you have already set it up, I would recommend either uninstalling it or removing the current account out of Seven.
pennywisdom said:
Ooh no that's not what you want to do. Seven works just fine through Pocket Outlook, there is no need to get another program.
Simply install Seven onto the phone, then run it. It should walk you through setup and you can choose Yahoo as your e-mail provider. Since you have already set it up, I would recommend either uninstalling it or removing the current account out of Seven.
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Ah, I see where I went astray. On the Seven website there is a large menu option at the top that says "How to Get Seven". So I clicked on that and it steered me toward Xpress Mail through AT&T. So I uninstalled Xpress Mail, signed up for the Seven Beta, and downloaded and installed it.
I set it up to sync with my Yahoo account, and that seemed to go well. I like the fact that I can select quiet hours. Previously I had my phone set to give no audio alerts for e-mails because I didn't like getting woken up in the middle of the night. ;-)
I've got a couple of questions:
1. When I look at Seven's General Settings, there are three options: Phone Data, Quiet Time, and Preferences. I have no problem getting Quiet Time and Preferences to work, but when I select Phone Data it prompts me for "The phone number of the device is" and then put the cursor in an input box. However, I can't type anything into the box either with the slide-out keyboard or with the on-screen keyboard. Is "Phone Data" something I need to be concerned with?
2. How does Seven work with regards to getting messages to my phone? Is my phone constantly "logged in" to Seven (and draining battery power)? If not, how does my phone know when an e-mail has been sent to me and it's time for it to download that e-mail?
Thanks so much for all the help everyone has been giving me on this issue.
Jamie
jayla said:
1. When I look at Seven's General Settings, there are three options: Phone Data, Quiet Time, and Preferences. I have no problem getting Quiet Time and Preferences to work, but when I select Phone Data it prompts me for "The phone number of the device is" and then put the cursor in an input box. However, I can't type anything into the box either with the slide-out keyboard or with the on-screen keyboard. Is "Phone Data" something I need to be concerned with?
2. How does Seven work with regards to getting messages to my phone? Is my phone constantly "logged in" to Seven (and draining battery power)? If not, how does my phone know when an e-mail has been sent to me and it's time for it to download that e-mail?
Thanks so much for all the help everyone has been giving me on this issue.
Jamie
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1. I believe that is just for Seven's own information, the grayed out box shows my phone number on my phone. I wouldn't worry about it.
2. I'm not 100% clear on how Seven operates regarding getting the data. I believe that their own server constantly checks your e-mail account and when it gets new mail, it pushes the mail to your phone immediately. Now, your phone will maintain a constant data connection in order to do this, so it does use up more battery than if your phone was not connected to the internet. The alternative is to set a scheduled send and receive, perhaps once every 10-15 minutes. This would have your phone connect to the internet, query the server, and then download any mail and disconnect.
According to what I've read regarding push e-mail, push actually uses less data because the act of querying the server and getting a response takes more data than a push connection. A push connection is sort of like a heartbeat, it only sends tiny packets of data to maintain the connection, sending more data when an e-mail actually comes in. I'm assuming that less data = less battery used, although that could be incorrect.
You can try your own test as far as the battery life goes, but I had to wait for a slow day where nobody called me and I didn't have to call anybody and could just let my phone sit there pushing e-mail all day. You could run that test and then run a control test where you completely disabled your e-mail for a day on the phone. If you can see your phone's battery life in a percentage, you can subtract the 2 days and figure out how much data per day your e-mail push connection actually requires. I'm thinking it's not going to be that much though.
Things are looking quite good so far. I'm glad I posted here.
One thing I'm having an issue with still, however, is that when I receive e-mails my phone doesn't give me a notification. E-mail is pushed instantly to my phone, and if I turn on the screen it visually shows a waiting e-mail with the little orange number (I use the built-in TouchPro interface on my Fuze), but my phone doesn't beep or vibrate.
I went into the Sounds & Notifications settings and under Notifications and verified that the "Play sound" box is checked and that a tone is selected from the drop-down menu (I even tested it to make sure the tone plays). I have "Flash light" checked and set for no limit, and "Vibrate" checked. Yet when e-mails are pushed to my phone none of those things happen.
Any ideas?
Jamie
jayla said:
Things are looking quite good so far. I'm glad I posted here.
One thing I'm having an issue with still, however, is that when I receive e-mails my phone doesn't give me a notification. E-mail is pushed instantly to my phone, and if I turn on the screen it visually shows a waiting e-mail with the little orange number (I use the built-in TouchPro interface on my Fuze), but my phone doesn't beep or vibrate.
I went into the Sounds & Notifications settings and under Notifications and verified that the "Play sound" box is checked and that a tone is selected from the drop-down menu (I even tested it to make sure the tone plays). I have "Flash light" checked and set for no limit, and "Vibrate" checked. Yet when e-mails are pushed to my phone none of those things happen.
Any ideas?
Jamie
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Ah yes, I was aware of that problem but I forgot that the version of Seven I am using is not the *official* release version. It's more of an in-between build. The notification problem is fixed though as it was a big complaint on the previous version. Something they did between the last 2 versions broke the notifications.
Anyway here's the link to the newest build
http://community.seven.com/files/client.ppcwm6.Release-18_0-327672-def_seven-preview.cab
Interesting. I followed the link and installed the version you indicated. It said on my screen that it was uninstalling the previously existing version of Seven from my phone in favor of the new version. Everything seemed to go fine. After the install, the phone reset, and all seemed to be working fine.
But I still don't get e-mail notifications.
Oh well, it's not that huge of a deal. Thanks much for all the help you've give me.
Jamie
jayla said:
Interesting. I followed the link and installed the version you indicated. It said on my screen that it was uninstalling the previously existing version of Seven from my phone in favor of the new version. Everything seemed to go fine. After the install, the phone reset, and all seemed to be working fine.
But I still don't get e-mail notifications.
Oh well, it's not that huge of a deal. Thanks much for all the help you've give me.
Jamie
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Hmm, I know that when I upgraded to the newest version and my notifications stopped, I backed it down to the older version and that one still worked fine. Then I refrained from upgrading until I found this cab file. I may have done a full uninstall first, but I'm not sure. Try uninstalling and reinstall that cab file again. Make sure to do a soft reset in between.
I know that the fix for notifications on the broken version was to turn on the pop-up. Then it would give you the sound and pop-up preview of the message. Try enabling that as well to see if you can get the sounds working, although like me you probably don't want to have that, just the sound notification.
Sadly, that doesn't fix the problem. I can get the pop-up to display, but e-mail messages won't activate an audio notification or cause the light to flash. All my other sounds and notifications (text messages, telephone calls, etc.) have always worked, so I'm not sure what the cause of this may be.
I'm going to be swamped for the next few days. Probably sometime over the weekend I'll look more into it. But thank you very much for all the help you've given me. Even without the audio notifications, this is a far superior way of handling mobile e-mail that what I was doing before.
Jamie
if you really have a battery problem, just buy a new extended battery off of eBay or something, it's only about $20. shipped. I did that and it works fine.
also, you can change the settings so that the email doesnt download every 30 min, instead change it to an hour or 2.
also, you have one more option...you can use the Seven app. It is a very fast email client without draining your battery. Because you don't have 3G service in your town, you don't have to worry about turning off the 3G....but if you are in an area with 3G service for a while, just turn off 3G. this way you don't use as much of the battery, but you can still access the network and you won't have that much of a problem.
Hey all... noob to the forum, it's been a great resource for my new Captivate, so thanks for that...
I'm not going to start a whole battery life thread, but last night, I went to bed with a 40% battery and the device died overnight (making me late to work )..
On my iphone, I was able to significantly improve battery life by fetching emails rather than pushing them, and I would like to do the same on my Captivate... is there a way to manually set the sync options?
The only one I have found that lets me pick a time is facebook sync.
Thanks all.
You have to setup your email accounts first. There's an email icon in applications. Once you've got them setup you can go to the email app and see a list of all your email accounts...you're able to select which email account you want to to view from there. Anyways from the email app you can click the 1st button on the bottom left of your device which is the default button used to access settings for any program. From there you can select how often you want it to sync or push.
Under accounts and sync uncheck gmail, then add your gmail accounts to the regular e-mail app. Then you can set fetch. I don't believe push should really kill the battery though, by its nature, because it's not polling for information. The notification for the e-mail comes down to it as a small data packet only when it's necessary to do so as far as I know.
Generally, I like the push email. It is more efficient way for a phone. And doesn't necessary use more battery. It really depends how often you receive new emails. If you receive new emails constantly, push may use more juice. On the other hand, if you occasionally receive new emails, fetch with long intervals may save you some juice.
Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I897 using XDA App
I receive about 10-15 emails an hour...
Unfortunately, some of my accounts are on google apps, and I have to use the Gmail application... The regular mail app is not taking the IMAP or POP settings.
incakola said:
I receive about 10-15 emails an hour...
Unfortunately, some of my accounts are on google apps, and I have to use the Gmail application... The regular mail app is not taking the IMAP or POP settings.
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For Gmail using IMAP or POP, you have to enabled it first in your online GMail settings.
The only time you will see benefit from fetch email is to set your fetch period longer, e.g. once every few hours. If you're going to fetch every 15 minutes or so, you will end up use more battery juice than push.
foxbat121 said:
For Gmail using IMAP or POP, you have to enabled it first in your online GMail settings.
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Doesent work.
foxbat121 said:
The only time you will see benefit from fetch email is to set your fetch period longer, e.g. once every few hours. If you're going to fetch every 15 minutes or so, you will end up use more battery juice than push.
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How would fetching every 15 mins use more battery than a consistent connection.
I want it to fetch only when I open the email... I'm in front of a computer all day, and don't need my phone alerting me of an email at the same time as my computer.
push is not a consistent connection, the phone is alerted when new data is available. that is why it saves more battery
It looks like the battery modes don't work reliably on my Atrix 2.
1. When a battery saver mode is selected and the battery & data manager turns push off, it does not obey the fetch schedule that the user selects in the e-mail client. Instead it defaults to fetching every 15 min. In fact it does this even if push was not enabled in the first place.
2. The off-peak hours selected in battery modes are not followed by the battery & data manager. Even during peak hours, push is turned off after inactivity (and the e-mail client reverts to fetching every 15 min by default, even if some other fetching schedule was selected by the user beforehand).
3. The “Turn off data after:” option seems to have no effect. No matter what interval is selected here, push is turned off after about 15 min of inactivity from what I can tell.
Is anybody else having problems with battery saver modes?
Nope, haven't had that problem
i have the same problems with email.
Nope I do not have that problem.
Sent from my MB865 using XDA App
I did some more testing and regardless of what battery mode is selected, the e-mail client defaults to fetching every 15 minutes at completely random times from what I can tell (whether or not push is enabled in the first place). This seems to be a problem with Motorola’s custom e-mail client and not the battery modes.
It is interesting that some users are not having this problem.
916x10 or Coldheat– Are either of you on an updated build by any chance?
I am using the device as it came out of the box. System version: 55.11.16.MB865.ATT.en.US and Build: 5.5.1-175_EDFFW1-16
I sent an e-mail to Motorola support, let’s see what they have to say (if anything at all). Looks like a lot of Bionic users are having the same issue as well and Motorola failed to resolve it so far.
Im on the same build as you. Did u open the email app, go into settings and pick the sync interval you want?
Sent from my MB865 using XDA App
I did pick an interval, but somehow it would always revert to 15 min when push is enabled. However, I did discover today that push works fine even when this happens. I sent my corporate account several e-mails today from another account at random times and all have come in instantly without problem. When I check the client right after an e-mail comes in, it actually says push is enabled again. So I believe this is simply how the Motorola client works.
hte said:
I did pick an interval, but somehow it would always revert to 15 min when push is enabled. However, I did discover today that push works fine even when this happens. I sent my corporate account several e-mails today from another account at random times and all have come in instantly without problem. When I check the client right after an e-mail comes in, it actually says push is enabled again. So I believe this is simply how the Motorola client works.
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Maybe that's why I haven't had this problem, I have never enabled push as I don't have anything that's that urgent that I need to be notified about it immediately. If it's that serious they can call me.
916x10 said:
Maybe that's why I haven't had this problem, I have never enabled push as I don't have anything that's that urgent that I need to be notified about it immediately. If it's that serious they can call me.
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push was automatically enabled for my gmail accounts. i had to physically disable the push in email sync
Never had any of these problems, battery mode always set to nighttime saver. Only have gmail synced to this phone so couldn't say about another email application.
Hello,
I have a Nexus 5 and i'm trying to get my corporate email working on Gmail using Exchange Service (only mail for the moment, no contact nor calendar).
It works great for an undefined periode of time but then, the sync goes crazy.
What i mean is thant when you go on Settings -> Accounts -> Exchange > my_coporate_account, a spinner appears and disappears on the mail line in an infinite loop. If, on the same screen, I tap on the three dot menu, "Sync Now" and "Cancel Sync" do the same crazy loop. Of course, my phone became really warm and my battery goes down really quickly.
I've made some tests. If I set the interval to 15 minutes instead of push, it works for a periode of time but then instead of "loop syncing" i just dont receive my emails at all.
Something strange, it seems that when my device change its ip (going to wifi to Lte for example), the sync magically works again but then it fails after an undefined periode of time.
I don't know if it's a server problem or a phone problem but as i'm the administrator of the server, i can perform some tests if needed (Exchange 2010 SP3 update 10).
Thanks for your help.
Fred
XDA Visitor said:
Hello,
I have a Nexus 5 and i'm trying to get my corporate email working on Gmail using Exchange Service (only mail for the moment, no contact nor calendar).
It works great for an undefined periode of time but then, the sync goes crazy.
What i mean is thant when you go on Settings -> Accounts -> Exchange > my_coporate_account, a spinner appears and disappears on the mail line in an infinite loop. If, on the same screen, I tap on the three dot menu, "Sync Now" and "Cancel Sync" do the same crazy loop. Of course, my phone became really warm and my battery goes down really quickly.
I've made some tests. If I set the interval to 15 minutes instead of push, it works for a periode of time but then instead of "loop syncing" i just dont receive my emails at all.
Something strange, it seems that when my device change its ip (going to wifi to Lte for example), the sync magically works again but then it fails after an undefined periode of time.
I don't know if it's a server problem or a phone problem but as i'm the administrator of the server, i can perform some tests if needed (Exchange 2010 SP3 update 10).
Thanks for your help.
Fred
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Hello, thanks for using XDA assist!
First, please create an account so you can post in other forums.
Here is the Nexus 5 main forum area:
(You should bookmark this)
http://forum.xda-developers.com/google-nexus-5
After creating your account, please ask for help here:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/google-nexus-5/help/help-thread-nexus-5-question-t2496506
The experts in that thread will be able to help.
Good luck!
Thanks
You can close/delete this post if needed.
Fred
Yesterday on my gs5, in attempt to save juice, I changed my stock email push to manual for both my gmail and hotmail accounts. I have a few questions. I also set both my web based gmail and hotmail accounts to fwd my email to my sms email domain so my email is sent to (my number)@tmomail.net. Thus, I get alerts when I have an email and then can go and manually grab them. However, my master sync is still turned on for everything.
First, today, I still got a few emails come through automatically even though push is off. Is that normal?
Also, Exchange services all day today was first or second place on my battery stats, and showed under total connection time that it was connected about 30% of the time., even though under my running services in settings, both the email and exchange ram usage are very minimal, less than 10mb each. Why is it still so high in my battery stats, with push turned off? Before changing push to manual, I usually had: 1. Android system and 2. Screen before exchange services under my battery stats. In fact, exchange was usually not even in the top 5. What could be the cause of this? So far all I have done is clear my email and exchange cache and it has had no affect. The odd part about this is I'm still getting excellent battery life. It has improved. I'm about 1 hour screen time per 10% battery usage. I keep my screen pretty dim, which I think has made the biggest difference. However, it still seems like exchange should not be so high up on my battery stats list, especially with pushed turned off.
Finally, are there anymore email clients that offer sms alerts when you have new mail in your inbox? Gmail and outlook discontinued that feature, and I'd rather use that than having my email fwd to my tmomail.net, which comes through as a very long mms.
Thanks all.