While down at the tennis tournament earlier this week, I was in the EDGE wasteland known as Cincinnati. I don't know what the deal is, but AT&T's EDGE coverage is very nearly useless. The coverage map says it's there, but I'm not convinced.
Anyway, twice since upgrading to the new software, the phone has totally drained the battery over a relatively short period of time, the usage stats showing hours upon hours of use. What the hell could be running in the background? I wondered.
I immediately turned off the push service, because it appears to talk to it regardless of whether or not you have apps that use it. That just left the mail checking every 15 minutes. Anyone who has used Gmail's IMAP knows it's not particularly fast to respond. Combine that with crappy connectivity, and it's even slower.
I turned it off, setting it to manual, and sure enough, I bet I could go days without a charge. Usage shows 30 minutes in the last 24 hours. That includes around 10 minutes of talk time, using the alarm (and snoozing), a couple of weather checks and manually receiving and sending e-mail.
My theory then is that the error handling of the mail app blows. It has no sense of timeout, and just keeps transmitting away even though it can't make a connection. That's pretty lame. Hopefully it's something they'll fix. Although, honestly I've never really used it to be notified of received e-mail in quasi-real time. If I typically only use it if I'm looking for it.
Or that it's EDGE and not 3G. Last year at Holiday World, I could check my e-mail in seconds at one end of the park, and lose EDGE completely at the other end. Seems like their coverage is a lot more spotty, which is surprising considering that 3G is a more recent build. You'd think EDGE would be better established by now.