[strcat]

Conversations keeps open a TCP connection and the server pushes new messages. The only kind of polling is a ping to keep the connection alive which can be scaled based on how often it proves to be necessary on that connection. It works the same way as GCM. GCM isn't inherently more efficient than an app doing it, but with GCM it's one connection across all apps using it for push vs. each app doing it on their own. Conversations is also one of the few doing it very well without GCM. Most have a much lazier implementation of push or worse they don't do push at all and really do poll.

[hueller]

Thanks for the update and sorry for the misinformation. The performance is much better than the few apps I've seen advertise "non-GCM" so I definitely believe it.