K-9 Mail: Battery culprit

[Dural]

I love K-9 Mail, and without it, I wouldn't have IMAP access to my work mail. I've used it on previous devices (all non LTE) without issue. On the Nexus, it once again works flawlessly. Unfortunately, after troubleshooting sources of battery drain on my GN, I've verified that K-9 is the cause. Without it, I'd easily get 12-14 hours on moderate to heavy use. With it, 8-9 hours is the most I can hope for.

I currently have Fetch settings on K-9 set to Never and force sync/push to all folders on-demand only. Nevertheless, it is constantly keeping the CPU awake for 7-9 hours at a time. I'm stock (unrooted) on 4.0.2 and have no reason to believe 4.0.4 will improve the situation.

Does anyone know if the applications has been optimized for ICS or have any tips for minimizing this apps' power footprint? Any alternate email app recommendations (IMAP enabled) that use less CPU resources? This is a tough one, as the program is very robust and I love the interface.

 

[Cigar-Junkie]

I too love K-9 but moved to Kaiten for added support and to give the dev some reward. I don't recall having an awake issue on either program but Kaiten is working great. Three Imap, two Gmail accounts on push here.

Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using Tapatalk

 

[Dural]

I too love K-9 but moved to Kaiten for added support and to give the dev some reward. I don't recall having an awake issue on either program but Kaiten is working great. Three Imap, two Gmail accounts on push here.

Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using Tapatalk

Thanks, I'll check it out. Even with Push completely disabled, K-9's power drain is steep.

 

[Paul627g]

From looking at K-9 on the Market it was last updated earlier this month so it should be supporting ICS completely.

Have you tried going into Settings>Developer Options> under APPS select the Don't Keep Activities box..

That's probably about the best option I see for you to make sure its killing the process when your done with it. Whatever you do don't bother trying to install 3rd party task killers to resolve this.

 

[SSHGuru]

I run K-9 with it grabbing about 4 or 5 accounts and it never takes more than 2%-4% after a day.

I do have it set to pull each account every 15 minutes so it doesn't keep checking too often.

 

[Dural]

Have you tried going into Settings>Developer Options> under APPS select the Don't Keep Activities box...

Never would have thought of the setting change under Developer options, thanks. I'll let you know if I see an appreciable difference.

 

[Dural]

I run K-9 with it grabbing about 4 or 5 accounts and it never takes more than 2%-4% after a day.

I do have it set to pull each account every 15 minutes so it doesn't keep checking too often.

Envious of the 2-4% utilization: I'll routinely get 20-30% on average even with Push now disabled.

Question: Wouldn't pulling each account that often (every 15 minutes) increase battery utilization vs. a more infrequent poll time? I'm currently set for every 12 hours.

 

[klausroma]

I love K-9 Mail, and without it, I wouldn't have IMAP access to my work mail. I've used it on previous devices (all non LTE) without issue. On the Nexus, it once again works flawlessly. Unfortunately, after troubleshooting sources of battery drain on my GN, I've verified that K-9 is the cause. Without it, I'd easily get 12-14 hours on moderate to heavy use. With it, 8-9 hours is the most I can hope for.

I currently have Fetch settings on K-9 set to Never and force sync/push to all folders on-demand only. Nevertheless, it is constantly keeping the CPU awake for 7-9 hours at a time. I'm stock (unrooted) on 4.0.2 and have no reason to believe 4.0.4 will improve the situation.

Does anyone know if the applications has been optimized for ICS or have any tips for minimizing this apps' power footprint? Any alternate email app recommendations (IMAP enabled) that use less CPU resources? This is a tough one, as the program is very robust and I love the interface.

I am exactly in the same situation.

Until 4 days ago I was running my Samsung Galaxy S2 on a custo ROM based on GB (Ultratoxic 8.1). Using Kaiten email for my 4 IMAP account (2 gmail +2 google apps). Battery use was normal. I even had the same 4 account with Gmail app.


Recently updates to Litepro ICS 4.03 and the problem has started. Battery drain is too fast. Looking into betterbatterystats it seems that the BIG problem comes from Kaiten email client.

Now what to do?

 

[Dural]

I am exactly in the same situation.

Until 4 days ago I was running my Samsung Galaxy S2 on a custo ROM based on GB (Ultratoxic 8.1). Using Kaiten email for my 4 IMAP account (2 gmail +2 google apps). Battery use was normal. I even had the same 4 account with Gmail app.


Recently updates to Litepro ICS 4.03 and the problem has started. Battery drain is too fast. Looking into betterbatterystats it seems that the BIG problem comes from Kaiten email client.

Now what to do?

Update: I never did update to Kaiten and instead starting playing with every possible settings configuration in K-9. I now have that 2-3% battery utilization I was looking for. Here are my observations:

1) The majority of data (and battery usage) is going to occur in the beginning when your Folders sync to your device for the first time (for IMAP accounts). If you have a large volume of emails and attachments, it will exact an enormous burden on your phone in the short term. However, the pain is short-lived once the initial downloads are completed. Following that point, K-9 will only check (and download) changes to your synced Folders which utilizes much less data and consequently battery. Babysit your phone on WiFi (and plugged in) until this process is complete. Force folder syncs as necessary until all of the Folders are completely synced.

2) To minimize the footprint of the app if desired, restrict Fetch settings to limit either the number of folders that are synced, the maximum number of messages to download, and/or how far back to look (e.g., Last 2, 3 or 6 months, etc.).

3) Once all Folders have been synced, you can significantly limit the app's footprint by reducing the frequency of Folder syncs. The Inbox only can be checked/synced by making it a 1st Class Folder and all others 2nd Class. Alternatively, make all Folders 1st Class and sync all folders only once or twice a day. There's a great deal of flexibility possible once you start experimenting with settings.

After these changes, I'm now getting 12-14 hrs. off one charge with ~4 hrs. of screen time. I'm unrooted on 4.0.2 radios and never turn off 4G LTE. Suffice to say, no complaints.

 

[maxburn]

Bumping an old thread but I just recently found K-9 to be the source of my battery drain too.

Specifically in task manager it was using 60% CPU time for hours and just killing the battery very quickly. Using so much CPU the phone got HOT. I caught this happening several times over the past couple weeks.

-This is before the last update which posted yesterday, I hope the dev fixed that one.

Note i717 with 4.0.4

 

[SSHGuru]

I've been using it since the OG Droid and it's never taken much at all...

 

[maxburn]

To me it was pretty obvious that this behavior was a bug, killing the program and restarting it lowered the CPU usage drastically from 60+% down to zero or 2% when doing something. I don't know what triggered it for me but it only happens once or twice a week.

 

[SSHGuru]

Download OS Monitor - it's free. It can show you in far more detail what's going on. It can even alert you if something goes over an amount.

 

[maxburn]

Thanks, will do.

Also I uninstalled an app called K-9 unread count, it's a widget that tells you how many unread emails you have but it never really worked right.

 

[SSHGuru]

I tried and uninstalled that also - it could be the issue.

The latest K9 has a widget built in that does something like that.

 

[maxburn]

Nice, I didn't notice that before. Even emailed the dev about it last month and got a nope back.

Hope I don't run into the CPU usage problem again, I really like K-9.

 

[SSHGuru]

Me too it's the only email client I've used. Works great, free, no ads.

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[greyhd]

I recently installed K-9 on my nexus running JB and it was waking my device up causing my battery life to shorten.

 

[maxburn]

To a certain extent it is supposed to do that. If you don't want it look for settings like push or imap idle and disable them. If you disable those you won't get notification of new mail until you manually check.

 

[greyhd]

To a certain extent it is supposed to do that. If you don't want it look for settings like push or imap idle and disable them. If you disable those you won't get notification of new mail until you manually check.

Checked the default settings and push is set to "never" and it still was waking the device. I will give it another shot and see how it goes. Kaiten looks to be the same problem.