is autosync a battery killer?

[rockinfigz]

Click your email name and setting will show...

from Evo4GLTE on Android Central

There are no such settings under gmail app settings..that's under the universal email app setting which I have no idea why someone would even use that with gmail..so again there r no such settings under gmail app settings

 

[baxxc]

What is the best way to monitor when your sockets open and by which program?

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And you would be wrong.

It is not "Constantly" trying to update, and therefor it is not constantly using your battery.

Autosync only transmits when the other side has something to send. It doesn't constantly ask if there has been a change that needs to be synced.

This is accomplished by opening a socket to the server, then putting the radio to sleep. The socket stays open until server attempts to send something, or the socket times out. TCP/IP sockets typically time out anywhere from 12 to 18 minutes after they are opened.

Each time the radio listens for traffic (which in GSM land is every 120 milliseconds) it will see that traffic is waiting if EITHER the socket timed out or the socket became readable (has data waiting). It would then power up the radio enough to read the data, or reestablish the timed out socket).

Your phone is doing that all the time, 24/7 365 whether you have autosync on or not. That's how cell phones work. It takes virtually zero power.

So if you sync your Gmail, Contacts, Calendars, Picasa, Documents, Books, Music, Reader, all of those things you sync with Google are handled by ONE socket. That one socket gets set readable when there has been any change in any of those services that needs syncing.

Add another socket for Dropbox, or skydrive, or any non-Google mail accounts.

(For non-google mail accounts ALWAYS choose IMAP accounts, never POP3. Pop3 has to wake up and check mail. Have your gmail account pull mail from pop3, and get that account off your phone. IMAP accounts use IMAP IDLED, which works on the open socket method described above, as does Microsoft Exchange).

The vast majority of these services go hours if not days between any changes, so there are very few times that data needs to actually be synced. Most of the time its just a socket refresh. And all of these tend to happen at one time, because Android tries to get them to all drop at the same time by starting them at the same time when you bounce from one tower to the next or switch from cellular to wifi.

But the key point to remember is that your phone is ALWAYS talking to the towers anyway, every 120ms, so these socket refreshes take almost zero extra power.