[General Topics] caswell:
Hey everyone... Recently I've been looking for an instant messenger that I can leave on and have the smallest impact on battery possible. I looked around online and couldn't find any definite information... so I tested it out myself.

I tested Agile messenger v84, fring v3.24.3.157, IM+ v4.58, Jive IM v0.9.1.0, Mundu v4.0231, Palringo v08.04.29 and Slick v0.42

I have a Cingular 8525 running Wm6.0. 3g is on, hsdpa is OFF, screen brightness 100%, battery charge 100%, on usb power. Push email is turned off and I have today agenda, gprs monitor, phonealarm and acbtaskman running.

I soft reset the device and logged in to yahoo, aim, msn and google and measured the data usage and averaged the mA drain sitting idle for 10 minutes without having the device go to sleep.

Here is what I got.

Baseline (no im):

test1 10minutes - 0.00 data, 92.9 avg mA, 25.7mb memory used

test1 chart - no chart sorry

Agile:

test1 10minute - 0.07mb data, 179.7 avg mA, 27.4mb memory used

test1 chart - http://geekmatrix.com/battery/Screen005.png

Fring:

test1 10minute - 0.03mb data, 105.95 avg mA, 28.5mb memory used

test2 10minute - 0.03mb data, 111.19 avg mA, 28.2mb memory used

test3 20minute - 0.12mb data, 106.35 avg mA, 28.7mb memory used

test1 chart - http://geekmatrix.com/battery/Screen006.png

test2 chart - http://geekmatrix.com/battery/Screen012.png

test3 chart - http://geekmatrix.com/battery/Screen015.png

IM+:

test1 10minute - 0.06mb data, 231.26 avg mA, 26.7mb memory used

test1 chart - http://geekmatrix.com/battery/Screen009.png

JiveIM:

test1 10minute - 0.01mb data, 122.63 avg mA, 30.1mb memory used

test2 20minute - 0.04mb data, 157.68 avg mA, 32.3mb memory used

test1 chart - http://geekmatrix.com/battery/Screen007.png

test2 chart - http://geekmatrix.com/battery/Screen014.png

Mundu:

test1 10minute - 0.18mb data, 277.31 avg mA, 32.1mb memory used

test1 chart - http://geekmatrix.com/battery/Screen011.png

Palringo:

test1 10minute - 0.02mb data, 146.16 avg mA, 25.3mb memory used

test2 20minute - 0.02mb data, 138.88 avg mA, 25.5mb memory used

test1 chart - http://geekmatrix.com/battery/Screen008.png

test2 chart - http://geekmatrix.com/battery/Screen013.png

Slick:

test1 10minute - 0.25mb data, 226.44 avg mA, 28.4mb memory used

test1 chart - http://geekmatrix.com/battery/Screen010.png

Conclusions:

Agile messenger - Agile used to be my favorite im client until it went commercial. I haven't used it since then. I always did like the features it offered, but I didn't find it worth the price they were asking per month. Now that I can quantify it's power usage... I find that it is right in the middle of the pack. Overall it would drain the battery less than IM+, Slick and Mundu, but it's still not low enough to leave on all the time.

Fring - what can I say? I was very surprised and impressed by this application. Very low additional drain on the battery. Connections available with twitter, skype, gizmo and any other sip based voip. Not too mention I can use my GrandCentral account with Gizmo to make free Voip phone calls to landlines and cell phones (very very cool!). I have decided that this is going to be my everyday chat program. There are certainly no bells and whistles... you can't set your status like you can with some of the other apps... you can't send files... there is no message history, but it allows you to keep it on all day with minimal impact to your battery performance. That works for me... and hopefully in the future they will make some of these essential additions (hopefully without changing the power consumption).

IM+ - This was an old staple for me for a long time. I used this chat client exclusively when Agile Messenger went to a pay per month model. I never really understood why it sucked my battery down so fast, which turned into the reason that I rarely logged in to chat from my phone. However... now I can visually see what was going on behind the scenes. IM+ likes battery power more than I do obviously... and has no issues with putting me in the inconvenient situation of needing to find a place to charge up. See ya later IM+ ... as a recognized leader in this particular sector of mobile software... you fail.

JiveIM - Jive is currently in beta and seems to be a very promising chat client. I still think it has a bit of a way to go as far as features are concerned, but it's got a good start and though it's not a battery sipper... it is far from the battery glutton that say Mundu is. I will keep my eye on this one as the providers are actively developing it.

Mundu - OMG! That's all I have to say to sum it up. In 10 minutes of sitting idel... this app managed to transfer 1351 packets. Sure some of those packets were used to check my gmail... and I'm sure it has some other nice features, but c'mon - 1351 packets?

I will admit I didn't look into it too much to find out what all the benefits were to Mundu, but ultimately I figured it wouldn't matter because there was no way I would use it. Just sitting idle this app is like being on a connected phone call. This is really a program that is greedy for juice... and given the opportunity, would suck a battery dry before you had a chance to chat with anyone. Mundu - You are the weakest link... goodbye.

Palringo - I think Palringo is great. It's decent on battery - not great, but if I were ranking these apps... Palringo would be 2nd for battery efficiency and 1st in features and usability. I figure I will keep this one installed and use both Palringo and Fring as my chat clients of choice.

Slick - Finally there is Slick. Made by Lonely Cat, the same ones to bring you ProfiMail, there was a lot to like right off the bat with it's simple clean design. Nice features like native file sending and typing notification... there was a lot to like about this program. But after about 30 minutes of using it... I realized while it's on my battery floats like a cannonball (ref. damien rice).

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I know this is not 100% definitive by any means, but it's a good place to start I think. I couldn't find any information so I figured I'd do some investigating myself. Hope it helps someone out there.

** Note... I was going to try Nimbuzz, but it wouldn't start. Also... OctroTalk was a possibility, but I didn't like how it uses transports for Yahoo, Aim and MSN... So I skipped it.

Post some comments... let me know what you think.

Thanks,

Mark