How much battery does POP3 use compared to IMAP?

[viva.fidel]

Hi everyone,

Basically I use K9Mail right now to sync two Hotmail POP3 accounts every 15minutes.. I've looked at partial wake usage and it seemed good compared to other mail apps, but was wondering if the following method would be better:

I figured I could create a new gmail account on my PC and set it retrieve Hotmail POP3 retrieval, therefore the account would do the periodic checking (and not my phone) and I could connect via gmail's IMAP connection (and I could still use the original hotmail smtp server to send via hotmail within the gmail account)

Do anyone know how much battery this method would save considering i have two accounts pulling every 15min?

(I could also set the retrieval setting in Gmail to as low as 7.5min if thats a valid option.. more likely every 10min)

I have another question as well, can gmail sync-delete with the POP3 server when a message is deleted in the gmail app (like the K9mail app does)?

 

[sitlet]

Do anyone know how much battery this method would save considering i have two accounts pulling every 15min?

It would save a lot of battery, as the phone wont be polling every 15 minutes. However, you said you will gmail account retreive the hotmail. That will work, but I believe Gmail will only poll hotmail every 15-30 minutes. What I do, is have my Hotmail account set to forward everything to my gmail. That way, I get the emails almost instantly through gmail.

(I could also set the retrieval setting in Gmail to as low as 7.5min if thats a valid option.. more likely every 10min)

If you use the gmail app, there is no settings like that. It's always set to instant email.

 

[viva.fidel]

thanks for the hotmail forwarding tip, is the email deleted from the hotmail inbox after it is forwarded, that would be pretty good for me if it is.

Just found this news article Microsoft Adding Exchange ActiveSync To Hotmail - ITProPortal.com

Looks like hotmail will have push email support soon anyway!

Update: for those that are reading this, the EAS server is m.hotmail.com, although this isn't working for me as of yet

 

[sparkdroid]

POP means you have to download the subject headers and the mail contents. IMAP means you just download the headers and only the mail contents when you want to read a message. The only difference in battery life will be the communication time to download all the mail content. Waking to poll at very short intervals will outweigh the usage due to communication unless you're getting massive emails.

 

[aminaked]

In my experience POP3 and IMAP both use very little power. I use both on my droid and I use both k9 and the gmail app. My battery life is fine.

 

[AndroidSPCS]

Thanks guys, some good info / ideas on how to manage Hotmail.