[trogdor3000]

Sounds like the old Element app that was being used was using an always on notification to poll for push notifications instead of using a push service.

Element X only supports FCM cloud push notifications right now I think

[tcfhgj]

I think it used push on play store and polling on f-droid

[joecool1029]

Correct, the novel thing Element X does different is sliding sync which allows for much faster partial syncs when the app is opened. The classic apps would have to do a much more substantial (and energy intensive) sync each time it was brought up to foreground.

The big drawback are the X versions are still very far from feature complete.

[g-b-r]

It can use (and I think it's the default) UnifiedPush on F-Droid

[SushiHippie]

Default is pull, but if you have ntfy installed it shows a popup and lets you decide between pull or unifiedpush(ntfy).