Does Android sync really drain battery ?

Does Android sync really drain battery ?

The question is two fold. 1 ) does android sync really drain battery more 2 ) why is sync necessary to deliver push notifications

As an android user I do know that the centralised sync is which apps that work with accounts manage to sync data from their servers to the android client. But I have observed that having sync enabled all the time does drain more battery and have seen several forums with posts on this topic. But never read any proper clarification on this regards.

But isn't push notifications the solution to this? (at least to notification part . data sync is different) Gmail never had real push notifications. It expects sync to be on.

The android email app did have push notifications and worked fine without sync. But since 5.0 android email app is no longer there and the exchange services are now merged to the gmail app and that requires sync.

Apps such as whatsapp, twitter , instagram deliver notifications seamlessly without having sync to be enabled. When these can do why not email clients ?

I raised this to a popular android email client - cloudmagic and their response was - Mandating SYNC ON was intentional. On turning OFF sync, users expect notifications to stop. Which kinda made sense but at the same time it did not , given that sync and push notifications are totally different.

You may ask that in this day and age of 3000 mah + batteries sync should not be a problem. but my point is why sync when "true" push should work whatever be the case. And if Android sync does not drain battery as it is assumed to be , please share information on that too and one can turn on sync and don't really care about push notifications. Do share your comments .

p.s My understanding of sync and push could be incorrect :)

Submitted March 30, 2015 at 08:16PM by netcitizen

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