Instant Messaging and Power Consumption
 

Has anyone looked closely at power consumption and IM?
Taken any network traces to figure out when traffic is tx/rx?

My experience with my N900 so far is that I can stay online on multiple services (skype, sip, gtalk, facebook) for a working day at the office over wifi with some web browsing during the day

However last night the same setup got me to ~5-% battery 7-11pm last night, which is a little worse with little other usage

A few thoughts
* Using 2/3G, if I maintain 4 independent connections to different IM servers each could wakeup at different times
* Each wakeup could cause 3G radio to stay on for a few seconds
* As their unsynchronized power drain could be high
* If there was a way to synchronize usage would be less (alternatives - use single IM, or proxy them via say a XMPP server)

Would be great to trace when the gsm radio is active, and figure out what the most effective changes would be.

Re: Instant Messaging and Power Consumption
 

This is interesting
http://www.deepdarc.com/2008/02/14/mobile-xmpp/

Anyone know if the gtalk plugin on maemo uses google binary method?

Maybe worth trying a more controlled experiment one protocol at a time.

Re: Instant Messaging and Power Consumption
 

Another interesting link
http://www.olympum.com/imps/making-x...e-environment/

Re: Instant Messaging and Power Consumption
 

I was just today thinking of almost same thing.

I would like to know, which IM-system is least power hungry. MSN, Skype or gTalk. Or other?

Re: Instant Messaging and Power Consumption
 

I think jabber is the least power hungry, but I don't have any stats to back it up

I use most all my other accounts through a jabber account that has transports to msn, etc

the only one with no transport is skype, at least that i know of, but I use skype for calls too, so I keep that on anyway

Re: Instant Messaging and Power Consumption
 

check out jabber. way less talking to the im server than gtalk. so less wake ups.

Re: Instant Messaging and Power Consumption
 

Any suggestion on how to link MSN contacts with the Jabber account ?

Re: Instant Messaging and Power Consumption
 

get a jabber account on some server that offers an msn transport, there are many.

use a jabber client like Psi that supports service discovery and register your msn on the transport

your msn people now show in your jabber account on n900

Re: Instant Messaging and Power Consumption
 

gtalk uses jabber/xmpp, so that makes about zero sense...

Re: Instant Messaging and Power Consumption
 

We have two corporate xmpp servers running in our company
and I have more trouble with those things dropping connections
than the yahoo (all using pidgin) and I observe that the amount
of effort to maintain an xmpp connection probably does drag the
battery but it is noticeable but not by very much.

never used gtalk so I cannot comment on that aspect.

HTH