NOiSE Thank you. How many apps do you have that have Push notifications enabled?
As far as I know, Play Services are very useful if there are many apps receiving Push notifications and then they don't use a lot of battery. I have only Signal that needs the notifications so I guess I could go without Play Services... one hungry app using Websockets could (in theory) use less battery overall than Play Services for couple of apps.
I shall try for the next couple of days and report back.