Android 6 and Aquamail

[amirage]

Hi all,

Just wanted to check how's Aquamail playing along with Android 6 "ground-breaking" features...are new mails being notified or does MM force Aquamail to doze and that we need to open the app to getting new emails...

[nadir husain]

some k9 users are complaining that doze and k9  dont like each other.  kostya will be able to shed more light on this.  mm is still on less than 1% of android devices so early days yet.  besides gmail itself is having notification problems -  though not sure whether its because of android 6 or some other reason. 

[nadir husain]

https://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=197805#c71

[amirage]

Ok cool... Calling Dr. Kostya... Your expertise is required on this post...

[Kostya Vasilyev]

Doze mode is bad.

What's even worse is that even adding an app to "exclude from optimizations" system settings *does not* fully revert the changes.

Now about AquaMail:

- It prompts the user to "exclude from optimizations"

- When the device is in Doze mode, the system will let the app check mail at most every 15 minutes, not more often

- When the device is in Doze mode, IMAP push will (for most servers) stop working

Google wants all apps to rely on GCM (Google Cloud Messaging). The mail app would have to be cloud based (and Google likes this too).

That's how you get reliable push mail even in Doze mode.

Oh wait, maybe you won't:

https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!msg/nexus/Ayd_1TOemSE/yP9Chr4UBwAJ

Perhaps Google engineers who wrote Google Mail for Google Android are not very familiar with latest changes to Google Android.

Or maybe they are but those are bugs in Google Mail for Google Android, or Google Android itself, or Google Cloud Messaging.

Maybe someone at Google can talk to someone at Google and work out how make a reliable mail app for Google Android.

[nadir husain]

@kostya what is the inactive elapsed time before doze mode kicks in?

[Kostya Vasilyev]

Re: what is the inactive elapsed time before doze mode kicks in?

"Determined by Android as appropriate".

In my tests, using a Nexus 5 with 6.0, it appeared to be a few hours.

[amirage]

Hi Kostya,

Thanks for your feedback...essentially Google wants everyone to use their shit than look for alternatives...so much for throwing away my iPhone. From the looks of it, it seems that there's no going back from cloud-messaging services and the shitty Gmail app...

[nadir husain]

Doze or no doze i am sticking with aquamail.  there aint anything else like it.  besides if it takes a few hours for doze  to kick in i dont think it will affect me since there is always something  going on with my phone ie  text msg,  whatsapp,  email,  calls.  only time things are quiet are weekends.  oh i guess i will manage.

[amirage]

Ok, I did give this a go and it seems that on my Samsung S6 Edge (running 6.0.1 beta edition) the apps seems to be running fine. I did exclude it from the doze feature but the battery usage reported high "android os" usage implying high wake lock. I didn't change any other setting in the phone but just added this app with my accounts. Any other Android M users here who can validate this...

I guess Android M is just more like iOS with the OS forcing users to get tied down to the stock apps or risk facing battery issues...

[Kostya Vasilyev]

Re: but the battery usage reported high "android os" usage implying high wake lock.

First, you may be getting a higher % even if the app's absolute battery usage is the same -- if other apps / system processes are restricted and so are using less.

Second, please see the FAQ and search it for "battery" -- I think the issue with high "mobile radio active" (an Android bug) is not fully fixed in 6.0.

[Kostya Vasilyev]

Re: I guess Android M is just more like iOS with the OS forcing users to get tied down to the stock apps or risk facing battery issues...

I'm at all familiar with iOS, but it seems like -- yes, in iOS, background processing is severely restricted unless you go through Apple's push service. Same here in Doze mode (fortunately, it only kicks in after a few hours... so far...).

[amirage]

@kostya,

I think the mobile radio active bug is fixed with 6.0.1 unless google has ingeniously masked all the active bug under android os! But the issue is that android os drain only occurs when I'm using any app for emails other than the crap gmail app. Evidently, google doesn't want to stray away from the gmail app else it will punish us by draining our batteries...All the battery drain issues vanish when I'm back on the gmail app...

You've got to hand it google...they really know how to break stuff and add more bugs...

[Kostya Vasilyev]

Re: android os drain

So there is a new one? Where you get a high battery usage reported for "Android OS"?

Maybe it's the same mobile radio thing, just attributed to where it belongs (finally). Maybe it's something else.

[amirage]

Actually, Kostya, I have a strong feeling that the mobile radio active bug is only present for any other email app other than gmail...but in android L even gmail was not excluded from the bug...I think the android os drain is more to do with apps that don't doze => more wake locks...