iPhone's push emails..costly and battery consuming?

Caoimh37

I'm shortly setting up a small business that will require me to regularly check my emails on the go from my mobile etc and have a desent battery

I'm tempted to get an iphone when vodafone launch them (mid-march apparentely)....but I would like to get people's Pro v Cons for getting an iphone for business use?? I have been told that to get emails pushed to the iphone requires a lot of battery comsumption and end up being costly as it needs to be connected and usues alot of data...is this right??

and also does it compare to say a blackberry or alternatives in the market on this issue...any recommendations??

Cheers

deep1

Caoimh37 wrote: »

I'm shortly setting up a small business that will require me to regularly check my emails on the go from my mobile etc and have a desent battery

I'm tempted to get an iphone when vodafone launch them (mid-march apparentely)....but I would like to get people's Pro v Cons for getting an iphone for business use?? I have been told that to get emails pushed to the iphone requires a lot of battery comsumption and end up being costly as it needs to be connected and usues alot of data...is this right??

and also does it compare to say a blackberry or alternatives in the market on this issue...any recommendations??

Cheers

Hope this might help.
My daily usage stats:

Approx 2 hours of music.
1.30 hrs of calls.
bit of gaming, browsing, facebook other apps etc.
6 emails accounts and on average checks them about 5-6 time in a hour ( not on push though)

from 6 in the morning to time i get home in evening abt 7pm still have 30-40% left.

Just don't use push, check them manually, keep wi-fi and 3g off, you will get a decent time.

Caoimh37

deep1 wrote: »

Hope this might help.
My daily usage stats:

Approx 2 hours of music.
1.30 hrs of calls.
bit of gaming, browsing, facebook other apps etc.
6 emails accounts and on average checks them about 5-6 time in a hour ( not on push though)

from 6 in the morning to time i get home in evening abt 7pm still have 30-40% left.

Just don't use push, check them manually, keep wi-fi and 3g off, you will get a decent time.

Sounds quite impressive and I envisage a not too dissimilar usage pattern for myself..... nice to have that 30-40% of battery there as a buffer.....how much of your data allowance does all that eat into? or what package are you with?......

Cheers

Stuxnet

as a heavy user, i find i charge the phone every night beside me as i sleep, the average data use is about 3-500 mb a month, unlimited data on the new plans ='s 3 gigs, (2gig with vf i think) and old plan was 1 gig of data, so most people and heavy users wouldn't even come near using all the data allocated to them, unless tethering, despite everything else about the tariffs, the data is very generous, so you'll be grand, especially if you have wifi setup at home or office, your iphone will switch over automatically when it can recieve the signal,
so ya, a charge every 24 hours isnt unheard of, iphone battery is crap anyhow
you wont have any problem with data, even with lots of push apps working all the time

deep1

Caoimh37 wrote: »

Sounds quite impressive and I envisage a not too dissimilar usage pattern for myself..... nice to have that 30-40% of battery there as a buffer.....how much of your data allowance does all that eat into? or what package are you with?......

Cheers

I am on 1gb and use abt 350-400mb every month, I use wi-fi at home, TBH Mail doesn't use too much data( i think it's only abt 4kb per email) unless you have attachments.

copacetic

I have push on one of my emails accounts and it doens't affect the battery life too much, I'd average 30-40 or so emails coming in to that account per day so there is not that much/any overhead compared to attempting a fetch every 15 mins or so. I don't use music as above but prob do an hour or so of calls a day on the mobile. I charge overnight and usually get home with 80% battery left. (bluetooth, wifi off, 3G always on). I don't use the wifi in the office as although it saves you data it kills battery life in my experience, and I'm not near the data cap.

I'm away from my desk a lot so use the email extensively during the day and find it great compared to the nokia e series phones I was previously using. Mostly text mails with a couple of attachements a day sent/received gets me to 250MB a month or so.

Of course if you are getting emails every couple of mins then push will affect your battery life. as above though if I forget to charge overnight or am away for the night the phone is usually on it's last legs or dead the following evening. I keep a spare charge cable at my desk for this.

Caoimh37

Thanks for all the info and different patterns of use re:emails and advice folks


Looks like the iPhone is showing up to be well up the task of being a strong and capable business phone as well as all the added media benefits


Really appreciate all your time in replying!

Cheers

unklerosco

What iPhones have you guys got?? 3G or 3GS??

I'm getting nowhere near those levels of batt life. Left the house today fully charged and came home with 18%. Bout 1hr of calls, 30 mins wifi and about 45mins of 3g.
Used GPS for about 2 mins to find a hotel. That was it, no video, music or gaming....

I keep 3g and wifi off, only turn them on when I need them(using SBsettings). Only radio that stays on is the bluetooth...

dingding

I leave bluetooth on for the car kit, and have 3G and wifi on all the time.

Make about 10 minutes calls per day and use push to 3 email accounts, one has a lot of emails as it is work related.

The battery lasts the day and I have to charge it every evening, sometimes it runs out late evening.

I got an external battery when on holidays in the US. It is a "Mophie" battery and I got it in a apple shop. It makes the phone a bit deeper but I have no battery problems now.

I have the phone on 3 network (Italian unlocked phone) and I ahve a 1GB data add on. I never used even 1/2 of the data allowance.

Also the iphone email client is very good for reading attachments. Can read pdf and office documments and pictures.

I can recommend the phone.

Hope this helps.

letitroll

deep1 wrote: »

Hope this might help.
My daily usage stats:

Approx 2 hours of music.
1.30 hrs of calls.
bit of gaming, browsing, facebook other apps etc.
6 emails accounts and on average checks them about 5-6 time in a hour ( not on push though)

from 6 in the morning to time i get home in evening abt 7pm still have 30-40% left.

Just don't use push, check them manually, keep wi-fi and 3g off, you will get a decent time.

if your a serious business user there is really no substitute for a blackberry
in my opinion. Any organiseation worth ther salt uses blackberrys it is the de facto business phone even Barack Obama can't do without his crackberry.

Look at all the iPhone battery crap threads here and all over the net and realise that if your business/livelihood depends on being availible 24-7 via phone or email the iPhone will let you down and cost your business money. Asking a question like this in the apple media forum where only fanboys lurk will not garner you an honest opinion ask in the business forum.

The above user is reaching their battery lenght by turning off 3G which is really standard feature these days. Plus the iPhone hasn't got real push notifications these require specially designed blackberry servers that only O2 and vodafone have. These really do push emails straight to your phone as they arrive. As from the post above you can see the user has the " iPhone push " turned off becuase it will kill your phone stone dead(which by the way is not real push but simply a timer that you set in the iPhone to connect to the Internet every half an hour and see if any emails have arrived. people who use the iPhone as just thier personal phone constantly come up against the phones poor battery life that's ok but as I said if my livelihood depended on it I wouldn't take the risk if you fancy one get one for yourself as your personal phone

The iPhone as well if you read the threads on this column has poor reception people here have reported the phone having no signal when others around them have good reception

copacetic

letitroll wrote: »

if your a serious business user there is really no substitute for a blackberry
in my opinion. Any organiseation worth ther salt uses blackberrys it is the de facto business phone even Barack Obama can't do without his crackberry.

Look at all the iPhone battery crap threads here and all over the net and realise that if your business/livelihood depends on being availible 24-7 via phone or email the iPhone will let you down and cost your business money. Asking a question like this in the apple media forum where only fanboys lurk will not garner you an honest opinion ask in the business forum.

The above user is reaching their battery lenght by turning off 3G which is really standard feature these days. Plus the iPhone hasn't got real push notifications these require specially designed blackberry servers that only O2 and vodafone have. These really do push emails straight to your phone as they arrive. As from the post above you can see the user has the " iPhone push " turned off becuase it will kill your phone stone dead(which by the way is not real push but simply a timer that you set in the iPhone to connect to the Internet every half an hour and see if any emails have arrived. people who use the iPhone as just thier personal phone constantly come up against the phones poor battery life that's ok but as I said if my livelihood depended on it I wouldn't take the risk if you fancy one get one for yourself as your personal phone



The iPhone as well if you read the threads on this column has poor reception people here have reported the phone having no signal when others around them have good reception

They also have push turned off. Not that the iPhone has real push emails you simply set it at different time intervals to check for messages. True push like those on blackberrys instantly push emails from specially designed servers to your phoneI mean as real business user

heh, blackberrys are a fine phone too, but you clearly haven't the first idea about how the iphone works.

push works fine with exchange servers set up correctly, you seem to be totally mixing up push with fetch. As for push email requires "specially designed blackberry servers", thats another statement that shows you haven't the first idea.

Guell72

I leave push notifications off and all other (location. 3G, Wifi etc) services on. Email fetches every 15 mins.
My battery lasts for about 2 days normal use.
If i turn notifications on, then the battery lasts only half a day.

Push notifications kill the battery stone dead.

blaz

letitroll wrote: »

Plus the iPhone hasn't got real push notifications these require specially designed blackberry servers that only O2 and vodafone have. These really do push emails straight to your phone as they arrive.

This is complete nonsense. The iPhone supports Microsoft ActiveSync which is push email and the email will be on your iPhone the moment it arrives in your inbox. Of course your provider has to support it - i.e. you either need a Microsoft Exchange server or an email provider that supports the same protocol like Gmail.

Before switching to the Nexus One I had an iPhone setup to sync with my Gmail account and all emails arrived instantly. There is a limitation though, you can only setup a single account like this (real push) on the iPhone.

copacetic

Guell72 wrote: »

I leave push notifications off and all other (location. 3G, Wifi etc) services on. Email fetches every 15 mins.
My battery lasts for about 2 days normal use.
If i turn notifications on, then the battery lasts only half a day.

Push notifications kill the battery stone dead.

This isn't normal, once you turn push on does the usage stats become constant? If so it's likely a corruption on your exhange account or an issue around calendar push. To start with delete the exchange account and recreate it, if problem is still there, turn off calendar push, if problem is still there, contact apple/O2 or your IT department, your exchange server is probabaly out of date.

See thread here for ideas:
http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=525293

Guell72

copacetic wrote: »

This isn't normal, once you turn push on does the usage stats become constant? If so it's likely a corruption on your exhange account or an issue around calendar push. To start with delete the exchange account and recreate it, if problem is still there, turn off calendar push, if problem is still there, contact apple/O2 or your IT department, your exchange server is probabaly out of date.

See thread here for ideas:
http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=525293

I use gmail. And even if i dont use push for my email or calendars and have push notifications on at all for any app, such as beejive, it makes the same difference to the battery life.
Push wastes the battery big time.

copacetic

Guell72 wrote: »

I use gmail. And even if i dont use push for my email or calendars and have push notifications on at all for any app, such as beejive, it makes the same difference to the battery life.
Push wastes the battery big time.

have a look online, plenty of people use push with nothing like the problems you are having. Plenty of people have issues also, but usually fine a problem around what they are pushing constantly using data. You should actually look into it, rather than make silly statements of 'fact'.

I have it on 24hrs a day with gmail on 15 min fetch also and get 36 hours or so of battery life, with about 2 hours calls included (wifi and bluetooth off, 3G on)

Guell72

copacetic wrote: »

have a look online, plenty of people use push with nothing like the problems you are having. Plenty of people have issues also, but usually fine a problem around what they are pushing constantly using data. You should actually look into it, rather than make silly statements of 'fact'.

I have it on 24hrs a day with gmail on 15 min fetch also and get 36 hours or so of battery life, with about 2 hours calls included (wifi and bluetooth off, 3G on)

Pot and Kettle here i think.
I did look online. Its a common problem. Have you looked? Ive tested this inside and out. And friends have verified the problem on their phones too. Push wastes the battery a lot.

letitroll

Your in the wrong forum OP no one here will tell you not to get the iphone

but just look at the device SME's choose in the main and that's the blackberry. That tells you all you need to know

No one can argue that the iPhone has:

Poor battery life
Poor reception
And Irish networks will sign you up to 18 month contracts with poor minutes and poor data for the privilege of owning one

The above doesn't sound like a smart move for any new business

Mr Bloat

I have a 3GS and I have:
- a Gmail account set up on it for IMAP, and 15 minute fetch
- a CalDav account to sync my Gmail calendar,
- an Exchange account set up which constantly polls my work server.
- bluetooth turned on as I'm usually in and out of the car all day long.
- IM+ push active all day long, keeping me connected to various chat clients and twitter push delivering tweets in real time.
- I usually have wifi turned on for most or all of the day too.
- I never turn off 3G.
The only thing I leave off unless needed is Location Services, I find that does eat the battery too quickly.
I'd also be using the phone for regular internet access, playing music and games and the occasional vpn/rdp access to servers over the course of a day, as well as two-three hours of calls.

I charge my phone overnight and disconnect it at 8am. I usually have 30-40% battery left when I get home at 6pm in the evening and the remaining life is enough to last until I get to bed!
Occasionally, if I'm on the phone a lot over a day, I might need to hook it up to a car charger to give it a boost but I wouldn't have to do this very often.

If you have good battery discipline and discharge/charge it according to Apple's recommendations, there's no reason why you shouldn't get 12+ hours a day out of your battery. I'm not an Apple fanboy (my iPhone is the only Apple device I have) but I'm a very happy iPhone user.

gerrymadden1

Interesting thread.... very strong opinions.

I had a Blackberry... nice phone. Very powerful.

I now own an iPhone 3G s 16 gb.

I don't use 3G.

I play music an average of 60 - 90 minutes a day. I have 150 albums stored on the iPhone.

I also tune in to Wunder Radio which gives me access to thousands of radio stations worldwide including all of the Irish stations. (only if I'm on a wireless network)

Any time that I can access a wireless network, I check mail, news, Sky Sport, PGA Golf scores. I even use my app to record programmes at home on Sky +.

I use my iPhone to log on to the Racing Post for immediate results, fields & tips.

If I'm in Dublin I can instantly check the availability of Dublin bikes.

Most importantly for me, my iPhone is an eReader (Stanza) and I usually have 5 or 6 novels stored at any one time.

There is no comparison between a Blackberry & an iPhone. You are not comparing like with like.

The Blackberry is a very powerful telephone. The iPhone is a mobile computer that you can also use to make telephone calls.

culabula

I once used voice-activated GPS on a very new Nokia N95. It was hideous to set up and use but once working, it took me from A on the way to B but died before getting there after just 25 minutes on a full charge using just that one app.

The iPhone doesn't really have "crap battery life". It's a fabulous device that can do many wonderful things and do them easily and well, which is why so many ordinary people have suddenly started doing things such as radio, TV, streaming, GPS, texting, webtexting, surfing, tweeting, instant messaging, calling and so on, all on the one device in the course of the day. As Steve Jobs warned, if you want 3G it will cost you....in battery life.

Well, want it we did, and as we have seen the battery doesn't last too long, once you start using it to the full. The solution is really to get external batteries in the shape of the Mophie or plug-in type (or both) if you're going to use it in a powerful way and if you want such facilities as wifi and push on all the time (I do).

Finally, note that fw3.1.3 has improved battery life, slightly.