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Help Gmail polling setting--where?

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paulri

Member
I just read that you can extend the battery life of your android (smart phone) by limiting the frequency of how often it will check for new emails. I have found that when my browser records I get a new email (on my laptop), immediately I hear a notification from my Galaxy Core Prime that I have a new email there, as well. Is there a way I can limit the number of times a minute/hour that my smart phone checks my email?
 
Tbh I just had a look and couldn't find it mate.
All I can suggest is tapping the 3bar menu icon at top left and scrolling down to the "halp" option.

I'm sure an expert will chime in and tell you though eventually :thumbsupdroid:

Actually this might help, hit the 3bars then scoll to Settings then tap your email address and it gives some options
 
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PS mods I don't care about my email address being public
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Looks like you just turn off sync and tell it how many days of mail u want but could (probably) be wrong
 
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Im ok with syncing--I mean, I do want to be able to read email. Its just that I am wondering if there is a setting that will not have it sync immediately---maybe every 20 mins or so.
 
You're getting immediate notifications via IMAP push, which is not the same as doing an email pass (sync). The phone doesn't check for notifications, the notifications are 'pushed' to the phone, which requires very little power, much less than doing an actual sync pass.

A push notification is just a very small file sent to the phone. But a sync pass logs into the email account, checks for mail, downloads new mail, uploads/downloads changes, gets everything in sync and logs off.

So lengthening the time between email syncing can help save a bit of power, a significant bit if it's been set, for example, every 5 minutes and it's changed to every 20, 30 or even even few hours. But push notifications don't work on a schedule and disabling them makes a fairly insignificant impact on the battery.
 
Thanks for explaining that. OK now let me ask: how do I change how often it syncs? I see in the settings that funkylogic showed above, the "Days of mail to sync," and it is set to 30.

What does this mean--that every 30 days, my Gmail account is synced? Or that only the last 30 days of email is synced.... or?




Crashdamage said:
You're getting immediate notifications via IMAP push, which is not the same as doing an email pass (sync). The phone doesn't check for notifications, the notifications are 'pushed' to the phone, which requires very little power, much less than doing an actual sync pass.

A push notification is just a very small file sent to the phone. But a sync pass logs into the email account, checks for mail, downloads new mail, uploads/downloads changes, gets everything in sync and logs off.

So lengthening the time between email syncing can help save a bit of power, a significant bit if it's been set, for example, every 5 minutes and it's changed to every 20, 30 or even even few hours. But push notifications don't work on a schedule and disabling them makes a fairly insignificant impact on the battery.
Click to expand...
 
That setting means that it syncs the last 30 days of mail. It could be a little mail or a lot depending on how much mail has been received and sent, but only the last 30 days of mail will be saved on the phone. It has nothing to do with the sync frequency.

I prefer an email client that allows setting the number of emails to sync rather than the age of emails to sync. But that's just me...

If you're using the standard Gmail app I have it disabled so I can't check to see where or if there's a setting for sync frequency. Sorry. But I think there's gotta be one somewhere.
 
I can't find it if it exists but as crash explained it doesn't really matter as it only syncs when an email is "pushed" to the phone, its not constantly polling for emails (if I understood correctly?)
 
Not quite, Funky. Push notifications can come anytime, and as often or as seldom as email arrives. IOW, someone sends an email, a notification arrives. There's no scheduling involved.

Sync is scheduled - every 30 minutes, 2 hours, whatever. Email is not synced when a notification arrives. Email is not pushed to the phone, only the little notification file is pushed. Sync only happens when a scheduled time comes up or when the email client is opened, which initiates a manual sync pass.

IOW, sync really has nothing to do with push notifications and push notifications has nothing to do with sync. They are separate processes.

I hope I've made this understandable...
 
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Only thing I know about sync, is that you can actually turn on-off sync schedule from drop down menu( when you swipe top of the screen downwards).
 
funkylogik said:
Perfectly brother. So which system does Gmail use? Sync?
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Hmmm...maybe not so perfectly. Let me put it another way...

All IMAP email can sync. Sync is not a system, it's a function. The IMAP system provides the sync function.

Similarly, push notifications is not a system, it's a function. The IMAP push system provides the push notifications function.

IMAP push is an optional function to IMAP. Not all IMAP email systems offer push notification functionality, and not all email clients support push notifications.

To complicate things a bit more, there's true push and faux push. In a nutshell, some services like BlackBerry and Exchange offer true push notifications. Gmail does it with a kind of tricked-out version of IMAP push. Most IMAP email systems accomplish basically the same functionality using a kind of faux push notification called the IMAP IDLE command.

Remember this: Mail is not pushed, mail is synced. Notifications are pushed, not synced.

Does that help - or did I make things worse?
 
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