very basic battery question

[nosaj13]

I'm not new to the world of ppcs by any stretch of the imagination...but i have one question which has always puzzled me. How much strain does checking email every 5 minutes have on my battery? I have a gsm touch and can't seem to hold a charge for more than a day with very minimal usage. A typical day for me is 2 or 3 short phone calls and several texts..in addition to checking for new email every 5 minutes. Would I be correct in assuming that to check for email my touch is awakened from standby..thus causing the drain?

Js

[wjones]

You are correct, but also consider that when it connects to check email it is using the radio to connect to the network. So essentially you are having the radio on almost ALL DAY. Similar to a voice call all day. Battery is then drained by the radio usage to talk to the network.

[nosaj13]

does the same apply to a push mail setup?

[nosaj13]

well...am i essentially doing the same thing by having GPRS always on? In other words, is this going to drain my battery at the same rate whether i'm checking for mail every 5 minutes or every hour?

[wjones]

No it is not the same for Push email. Push email wakes the device and delivers the mail when there is some. As opposed to the device connecting and querying for mail, the device gets woken (sp?) up and gets delivered the mail for Push. Push is a much more effective way of getting your mail... I forward all my mail to my hotmail account which then gets pushed to my device via Windows Live.

Regarding the always on GPRS... yes and no. Yes you are connected and draining the battery but just being on doesn't use as much as actually pulling or sending data. The difference is negligible and really irrelevant. I would say that you turn off GPRS all the time if you are trying to save on battery life.

Make sense?

[2manyphones]

You may want to install Battery Status and turn on the current drain option. While a bit of a catch 22, considering the screen has to be on for you to see what the drain is, thus causing a higher than idle drain. At least you can get an idea of what your device is draining and see if changing settings makes a difference.
Link to Battery Status (not sure if this is the current version)
http://www.chi-tai.info/cs_BatteryStatus_XDA_Neo_WM5_iM_cs.htm

The other suggestion is to consider changing ROMs. I have a GSM Touch and the factory ROM was really poor on battery life. I have been using the Blue Touch ROM version 2.10 (not the newest version) listed in the Elf upgrade section. I can now go more than one day without charging the battery, with push e-mail activated.