@daniel This is in line with my experience with signal. I have revoked all battery optimization permissions and essentially allow my phone to insta-kill it once it goes to the background. I don’t receive messages unless I open it, but my battery last eons longer.

@daniel I did some tests in the past as well and I remember #Conversations was one of the best apps on optimal battery usage, great work Daniel! 👌

@daniel

Do you plan to make experiments with element, too?
I would expect Conversations to perform a lot better since matrix is known to be more heavy on ressources but i mention it because it feels like an obvious direct competitor

@daniel That seems quite significant. I have looked into hosting my own XMPP server in the past. I like the idea of a small non-bigtech chat platform for my inner circle. Unfortunately, the biggest challenge is to get people to switch their conversation with you over to a different app.

@daniel

So I suspect Signal has a wakelock problem as they haven't tested extensively on devices without Play services? The battery drain is running at almost constant speed.

Conversations is great. There's not much to modify/customise before getting it to run on my devices.

@daniel you have to disable "mine bitcoin" in the settings. /s

@daniel Signal is probably not testing/optimizing for phones without Play Services.

@daniel btw molly a signal soft fork have unified push support. So we can use correct software (Conversions) as a notify provider 👍

@daniel

Not really surprised.

The CPU and Radio on your phone are both high draw devices. It's why your phone wants to kill or sleep any program as soon as possible. FCM & APNS use carrier data (& no encryption) which use much lower power stuff.
Otherwise you get what you see, or worse)

That's why Firefox only does Push it we have access to native, but also why data is encrypted.

@daniel While you're testing with GrapheneOS, maybe you could check if it keeps the connection open for longer when the phone is locked. Since a couple of months or so, I see 0 connections in the widget when unlocking my phone after a while, but then it reconnects quickly. However, the battery savings settings are the same as before and I don't know why it would disconnect otherwise.

@daniel though I am sure Signal is more battery consuming than any other XMPP app, I am unsure if the difference is as dramatic as shown in this screenshot. There is 20% usage by Signal and 12% usage by Monocles on my phone.

@daniel It's a well known problem: https://github.com/signalapp/Signal-Android/issues/9729

@daniel Known issue since years...
https://github.com/signalapp/Signal-Android/issues/9729

@daniel I recommend Monocles over Conversations since it feels like a more fleshed out app than Conversations while still being based on the same code

@daniel Mhh, Signal always keeps a connection to their server open for push messages. Maybe try Molly (Signal fork) with UnifiedPush and use Conversations as UnifiedPush provider.

@daniel

I use the @mollyim fork and it looks like that it does not use that much battery

@daniel I wonder if it would be any better if you used the play store version and microG. That's what I'm using on CalyxOS and while my notifications from Signal are less reliable than Conversations, battery usage isn't too bad, though it is worse. Here's my top contenders right now. I'm using the F-Droid version of Conversations.

@daniel Signal needs to keep active and send regular pings to keep the WebSocket connection open. This is not a technical requirement of WebSockets, but stems from Signal using the latest advanced cloud technology on their servers which cuts the connection if it doesn't see active payload traffic.

@daniel interessant. Ich kämpfe auf meinem #grapheneos auch seit einer Weile mit dem Akkuverbrauch von #signal. Schade, dass in #younohost seit dem Update auf #debian 12 nicht mehr automatisch ein #XMPP Server integriert ist. Das war schon ein sehr bequemer Weg für Laien wie mich, unfallfrei, unkompliziert und günstig einen solchen zu klicken und pflegen.