What is "Push"?

I think it’s a walkie-talkie function. You can communicate with someone else by pushing a button rather than dialing their number. I think.

It means that the email server sends emails to your phone when they turn up at the server sort of like how text messages are sent to your phone. The alternative is to set the phone to check in with the server at regular intervals or to manually check your self by launching the email app.

The benefit of having emails pushed to you is that you get them when they are sent the downside is that it reduces how long the battery will last between charges.
The other methods use less power but are also less convenient.

@FutureMemory thats PTT (pust to talk) and is some thing different. The iphone doesn’t support it.

@Lightlyseared thank you for your explanation!! that really cleared it up for me! so here is another, what is best? what should i do with mine? leave it on? off? set intervals?

It really depends upon how many urgent emails you tend to receive and how important it is to you to get them right away.

I decided to turn the Push feature OFF on my phone since I wanted to conserve as much battery time as possible when I’m away from the house (and the charger).

The way I looked at is that prior to having my iphone, I would check my emails whenever I opened my computer each day. That was working fine for me.

Just because I CAN now receive emails while I’m driving in my car doesn’t mean that I SHOULD.

Besides, if there is ever any time when I am expecting an important email, I can just turn the Push notification ON temporarily.

So far that hasn’t happened yet I don’t need to be that available to people every minute of my life :)

You can decide for yourself if it’s worth the reduced battery time.

@Buttonstc thanks for the advice I think I’ll turn it off cuz getting my email now or later doesn’t really matter to me, and with how much I’m on my phone I needto save as much of the battery as possible! Like I’m writing this from my phone right now! Haha

When it comes to iPhones and iPods, “Push technology” extends to more than just e-mail. It’s also the system that allows pop-up notifications sent from Apple on certain apps that support it.

For example, the Facebook app is a big user of this. If you have the Push notifications turned on and you’re logged in, it will send you popup notifications if someone’s commented on a status, or request friend notifications. And IM apps like Meebo will use it to tell you that someone sent you an IM so you don’t have to keep the app open to hold a conversation.

They can get a bit annoying sometimes depending on the app, but each app has it’s own settings to customize what is pushed, and the general settings on the iPhone will let you decide who gets to and doesn’t get to push notifications.

Personally, having push on for my mail doesn’t give me a significant enough decrease in battery life to want to turn it off. I just make sure to set it to fetch hourly instead of the battery sucking 15 minutes and just leave push on. Though I don’t get a lot of email so your mileage may vary.

@sinscriven wow I didn’t know that! Guess I’m turning it back on because unfortunately I am one of those sad little people that live on facebook

It also works with “Find my iPhone” feature!

Well, everybody needs to make their own decisions based upon what is important to them.

Just for curiosity, how did you used to check your FB updates prior to your phone? And did you miss anything critically important?

But don’t go by me cuz I can still remember functioning perfectly well in the days when a landline phone was pretty much your only option. Back then a cordless phone was considered the ultimate luxury :)

I realize that’s a difficult concept for those of you growing up in the digital age.

The idea that you could reach anyone at any hour of the day or night whether at home or traveling was unheard of. And life wasn’t really all that bad :)

@Buttonstc That’s sounding more and more like a pipe dream these days to be unwired for a period of time. D:

The bane of always-on connectivity is that people always expect you to be there. Don’t respond to a text and people get snippy. Those e-mails from my boss about why I haven’t responded to his e-mail about reports on a Saturday night are always nice. But on the plus side my phone has saved me from getting lost in San Francisco and find the most awesome chinese food I’ve ever had.

Guess you gotta take the good with the bad.

@Buttonstc I use to check it when ever could get my hands on a computer, but now that I can do it this way I check it everytime I get a notification pop-up, mostly that’s because I had a pretty bad accident and have been cuff off from the world because of it so aside from phone calls and texting it’s really the only contact I have with the outside lol, but once I can live again I prob won’t be on it as much…

And hey! I remember those phones!!! We always had the ones with the like 40ft cord! We did get a chance to “upgrade” to that fine piece of techonlogy you refer to as a cordless until I ran the bill up to 600$ when I was 13 hahaha good ol days

I leave it on. I don’t find it reduces battery life that much and never ran out of juice during the day.