I thought I would let my supporters know that I am also working on the OS 3.x battery drain issues. I am mostly just collecting data at this point because obviously the first priority is the push fix. My results regarding battery drain will be public and completely free. If I get enough customers of the push fix, I could provide other free solutions in the future. I have developed a script that monitors the time the phone spends awake and asleep each time as it happens. The phone already keeps a similar total in Settings -> General -> Usage, but my script provides more details.
I monitored 2 phones over 10 hours while they were locked and idle. I changed the configuration and then monitored 14 hours. I don't have a phone with 3G or I would monitor that too.
iPhone no SIM, Push over WiFi - Awake 4.3%
iPhone T-Mobile EDGE, Push GMail alerts - Awake 5.8%
iPhone no SIM, WIFI, GMail w/Exchange, Push - Awake 12.1%
iPhone T-Mobile EDGE, GMail w/Exchange, Push - Awake 24%
Due to this data, I have switched from using GMail with Exchange to a push notification GMail alert and manual fetching when I receive a message I'm interested in. As you can see, this gains 4 times as much idle time battery life.
Here is a sample of data from an iPhone with no SIM and push notifications. All data is in seconds.
Awake:25 Slept:57 Total Awake:559 Total Asleep:2100
Awake:25 Slept:279 Total Awake:584 Total Asleep:2379
Awake:23 Slept:284 Total Awake:607 Total Asleep:2663
Awake:25 Slept:283 Total Awake:632 Total Asleep:2946
Awake:25 Slept:283 Total Awake:657 Total Asleep:3229
Awake:15 Slept:668 Total Awake:672 Total Asleep:3897
Awake:26 Slept:742 Total Awake:698 Total Asleep:4639
Awake:23 Slept:790 Total Awake:721 Total Asleep:5429
Awake:23 Slept:1005 Total Awake:744 Total Asleep:6434
Notice that it keeps sleeping longer and longer.
Here is an iPhone with push GMail (Exchange) & push notifications
Awake:56 Slept:237 Total Awake:6447 Total Asleep:25440
Awake:29 Slept:211 Total Awake:6476 Total Asleep:25651
Awake:22 Slept:227 Total Awake:6498 Total Asleep:25878
Awake:20 Slept:229 Total Awake:6518 Total Asleep:26107
Awake:32 Slept:111 Total Awake:6550 Total Asleep:26218
Awake:38 Slept:104 Total Awake:6588 Total Asleep:26322
Awake:23 Slept:106 Total Awake:6611 Total Asleep:26428
Awake:28 Slept:231 Total Awake:6639 Total Asleep:26659
Awake:32 Slept:4 Total Awake:6671 Total Asleep:26663
Awake:22 Slept:192 Total Awake:6693 Total Asleep:26855
Awake:39 Slept:52 Total Awake:6732 Total Asleep:26907
The phone with Exchange doesn't sleep very long at all. I believe Exchange keeps waking it up to make sure it's still there. If only we could get Google to not "ping" our phones every 2-4 minutes they would last much longer.
I am looking for testers with good experience in SSH who feel comfortable running scripts on their phone. You also need to be able to copy files off the phone to send to me. The script only uses 1-2% CPU. Contact me at beta .. @ .. pushfix.info
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6 comments postedMy battery would die before 5pm on a normal work day with light to moderate use when i added the gmail exchange account, after removing it and setting normal imap and hourly checks my battery is 40-50% by the time i go to sleep so it's a huge improvement.
Yes, you had the same Exchange problems I did. It's too bad because it works great. Apple has their push servers configured to only send a packet once every 10 to 15 minutes idle time. I wish Google could configure their exchange servers to do the same thing.
Between the data traffic and waking up the phone, it really costs a lot of battery life. I read somewhere that real MS Exchange servers have configurable keepalive timeouts, so it's possible that company Exchange servers can be configured to not cause as much battery drain if the admin sets the right parameters.
And just so it's clear, it's not a TCP keepalive timeout that is causing the drain, it's Exchange sending a "heartbeat" packet.
Are you going to add this Push Fix into Cydia for those who aren't comfortable SSH into there iphones?
Yes, I hope to add it to Cydia soon. I'm still working out some permissions issues in the app.
Ok, thanks can't wait..., will i have to delete the previouse push fix from cydia before installing your push fix?
You don't have to, but it would be wise to anyway.