Gmail battery drain?

jamesino

Well-known member
Sep 30, 2012
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Does anyone's gmail app constantly use about 2-3% of the CPU when idling in the background? When I go into the stock task manager, it says that Gmail is constantly using 2-3% CPU cycle. It also noticeably affect battery performance.
 
Over the last 8 hours, Gmail has used 0.9% cpu on mine. Over 24 hours, 0.7%.

How much email do you get during a day?
 
I receive maybe about 30-50 emails a day. But even when I'm not receiving any emails for hours at a time, the app would just constantly be showing 2-3% CPU consumption. When I have it idle for like 15 mins, using GSam battery monitor, it predicts my phone to last for about >100 hrs based on my last 15 mins of usage when I have killed the Gmail app. However, when my Gmail does this 2-3% battery consumption, after 15 mins of idling, Gsam predicts that my phone will last for about 20 hrs based on my last 15 mins of usage. So it is making a noticeable impact on battery life even when no new emails are coming in.
 
I'm having the same problem. I noticed that if I exit the gmail app by pressing the home button, gmail will continue to run in the background using about 2 to 5% of my cpu. It seems to run constantly as I tried letting it run like this overnight (with my phone charging) and when I woke up it was still running at the same 2 to 5%.

The only way I can keep it from happening is by backing out of the application instead of hitting the home button.

Have you found a solution?
 
You could turn auto sync off.. I just want to check for emails once every couple hours.. Turning sync off has helped with the drain.

Sent from my amazing HTC EVO LTE
 
Unfortunately, turning sync off has made no difference with my problem. It seems to be directly related to the application itself, not the account. As a matter of fact, if I completely remove the account and just run the app (for testing purposes), it exhibits the same behavior.
 
Do you think it has anything to do with the fact we use our gmail account to log into our phone therefore causing gmail to run non stop as a associated app?

Sent from my amazing HTC EVO LTE
 
That's a good thought, but I doubt that is the problem because of the way I can avoid it by backing out of the app instead of using the home button. If whatever the app is doing to consume cpu time is intended, it would probably behave that way no matter how the app was closed.

Further, gmail didn't always do this. It has only started to exhibit this behavior recently and it has caused a noticeable drain on my battery.
 
That's a good thought, but I doubt that is the problem because of the way I can avoid it by backing out of the app instead of using the home button. If whatever the app is doing to consume cpu time is intended, it would probably behave that way no matter how the app was closed.

Further, gmail didn't always do this. It has only started to exhibit this behavior recently and it has caused a noticeable drain on my battery.

Yeah exactly, I'm pretty sure Gmail didn't do this on my Droid Incredible. Neither did it do this on the GS3 while on the ICS OS. It also didn't do this when I got the JB update or flashed CleanROM at first. But after a few weeks, it started doing this. Although it's not a dealbreaker, it does appear to make a noticeable impact on battery life.

I have not yet found a solution. What I just usually do is either suffer the battery drain or just kill the task via the task manager when I remember to.