Android - Sockets vs Polling

Question

As part of an Android app I\'m developing there is a chat room feature. We have a server which can process the incoming messages and store the messages. Is it better to keep

Answer 1

Polling lacks real-time connection and a persistant connection is battery draining. I think that what you are looking for is a combination of "push"-ing and persistant connection. You would wake your phone via push, and then establish a connection via sockets to handle chat.

I suggest reading this article. I'm not sure if it mentions c2dm, the google push service.