Personal Solutions For Push E-Mail On The E50
sebastian 2. October 2007 :: email, emoze, push, system seven
Most of you know what push mail is. Basically it means that emails are pushed to our devices instead of being pulled from the server, hence we don’t need to continually check our inboxes. Until some time ago, the only available solution was BlackBerry service.
RIM (Research In Motion, the company that makes BlackBerry devices) developed a compatible application called BlackBerry Connect to use non-BlackBerry devices with the BlackBerry service. Nevertheless, this application has not been homologated on all carriers, making a lot of S60 devices useless, despite the fact that we can indeed connect to BlackBerry servers. Beside it, sometimes we only want to check our personal emails because not all of us are corporate users and the whole BlackBerry service package is, to say, overkill.
This time, we will review two applications that can be a replacement to BlackBerry devices. I have narrowed the options to only two applications because I have tested them specifically on the E50, checking RAM usage, stability and overall performance. A much extended review can be found at All About Symbian. Since we are referring specifically to the E50, the options have been chosen to what fits best on this device. Other applications have not been chosen due to different reasons (either they consume too much memory, or they don’t fit nicely on the E50)
Just to note, the applications have been tested with a Gmail account, with POP access enabled, and both applications have been tested only with 24×7 push email settings, meaning, they are pushing emails all the time.
System Seven
The first choice that we have is System SEVEN by SEVEN Networks. Not to repeat what has been already said on the quoted article at All About Symbian, the future of this beta program is unknown, and we do not know if the final release will be free or not. The following is an overview of pros and cons:
Pros
- Emails can be truncated at any size. For people living in countries where carriers charge a lot for data transfer, email truncated at 1KB is enough to read sender, subject and first words of the email. The application provides through the menu the option to retrieve the complete email, and separately attachments (if any).
- Stability. It is indeed very stable. The connection can be paused at any time, and resuming it consumes just a few bytes and is very fast. New emails start to fall in the device inbox just a few seconds later.
- You can set more than one inbox for pushing simultaneously.
Cons
- Consumes more RAM than the other application tested, and for example, you can’t run simultaneously Active Standby, System SEVEN and Nokia Maps.
- Emails can’t be deleted on the device only yet. If you delete an email on the device it will be deleted on your Gmail account too.
Emoze
The second application tested is emoze. This has been selected as Editor’s Choice in the mentioned article on All About Symbian, and not without reasons:
Pros
- Consumes less RAM than any other email pushing application.
- It is fast*, really fast (most of the time, my emails arrive to my device even before the Gmail Notifier on my notebook tells me that a new email has arrived)
- It is very stable
- You can delete emails on your device only, your Gmail account will not be touched.
- With additional software, you can push your desktop email to your device, making possible to push any email that can be retrieved via your email desktop client (though, unfortunately, this additional application works with just a few POP desktop clients, namely Outlook and Lotus Notes).
- Scheduling is much more advanced on emoze, you can set specific days and times in which emoze will active push mail.
- When an HTML formatted email is sent, emoze strips all html tags, leaving a text-only email. This saves a lot of characters, and makes emails easily readable.
Cons
- You can only truncate messages to 5KB (less than 5000 chars) or 8KB (less than 8000 chars).
- Even if it uses much less RAM than any other email pushing application, you still can’t run at the same time Active Standby, emoze and Nokia Maps.
- You can set only one account.
- Startup takes much longer due to database integrity check on both device and server.
Conclusion
Both applications have their pros and cons. For me, one of the biggest advantages of System SEVEN is the possibility to truncate any email at 1KB and retrieve the whole email and/or their respective attachments. However, the fact that any email deleted on my device will be deleted also at my Gmail account is quite a big issue since the main idea of Gmail is not to delete any email anymore.
The only disadvantage of emoze is that emails cannot be truncated to less than 5KB. Considering the fact that we are testing applications to push personal email to our devices, I don’t see the “one inbox only” option as disadvantage (though this can be considered as disadvantage by many of you).
Finally, the unknown future of System SEVEN is a factor to consider before making a final decision. Despite the usual disclosure letter, emoze seems to be on the path of staying as a free service for personal use.
I hope this article has given you a possible approach to receive your personal email on your devices at low cost without the need to be attached to a specific BlackBerry service. I have been testing these applications for the last month, and receiving approximately 15 emails per day and sending 10, I have consumed 12MB of data. Even here in my country, 12MB of data are cheaper than a BlackBerry service.
Bookmark on: del.icio.us | StumbleUpon 
If you enjoyed this post subscribe to the Nokia E50 RSS feed (what's this?).
Not fan of RSS? Receive updates via email:
Comments:
Comments are closed for this article. If you have questions check out the Nokia E50 Forum.
Great review, I was looking for something like that, thanks a thousand times!!
Two questions: is emoze only working with gmail accounts? It seems to be, according to their website;
And: are these apps whowing incoming emails on the standby screen, like it is the case with the standard (non push) software from the E50?
No, emoze works with any account. You can have emoze working in three ways:
-OWA (Outlook Web Access) server.
-PC Desktop Connector. This is a free software, downloadable from their site, that works together with your desktop email client (currently only Outlook and Lotus Notes). The main disadvantage is that you have to keep your desktop computer turned on.
-Gmail accounts.
And yes, you have an alert on the active standby screen when an email arrives. In fact, emoze creates a new mail inbox just like a normal inbox, and if you want you can set it as the active inbox for alerts on the active standby screen.
Unfortunately, current version of emoze does not activate the E50’s flashing light. It sounds only once, and if you miss the alert, you’ll know that you have an email next time you manually check your phone or when something else happens (next email, a voice call, an SMS, etc). But that’s the only drawback. For the rest, works quite well, very well indeed.
Best regards,
Sebastián.
Great Article. Not too sure if u’ve use mail for exchange 2.0 and roadsync. Both are worth giving a try
Yes, I’ve tested both. Roadsync works pretty well, but it’s quite an amount just to have your personal email pushed. And MailForExchange eats an important amount of RAM and literally eats the battery. Requires too much processing.
In other devices with more memory, it should run fine, but on the E50 slows the device quite a bit. That’s why I narrowed options to System SEVEN and emoze, those are the two options that better fit the pecularities of the E50.
Best regards,
Sebastian.
Hey Sebastián,
Many thanks for this article. I was looking for something like this. I just activated unlimited EDGE on my phone for Rs. 200 / month ( around $4.2 / month ) and I get atleast 50 emails into my Gmail inbox.
Just some questions. How does it notify us that email has arrivied ? Can you post a screenshot ? And can I minimize and let it run in the background ?
This is great. Thanks.
Congratulations on the unlimited EDGE plan! And thanks for the compliment of course.
Well… about notifications, here System SEVEN goes ahead, but for just one detail. System SEVEN notificates as any new message on the phone. It also activates the flashing light around the joystick, exactly like a new email or a new message.
Emoze is a little behind. It alerts on the screen, just like any message. But it doesn’t activate the flashing light for example. You have to check the inbox manually if you miss the alert, or get the mail when a new one arrives.
Both integrate on the system as any inbox. You can select any of them as your primary inbox, and in Active Standby you’ll see a line telling you how many unred emails you have.
Emoze, for my likes, despite the small drawback on the alert, is my choice and which I am using today. It’s a little more stable, most emails fall in my phone even before the Gmail Notifier alerts me on the notebook. And the fact that we System SEVEN I can’t delete emails only on my phone and not on my Gmail account is a serious issue for me.
I’ll see if I can update with a screenshot, but believe me, you’re gonna be comfortable with any of them.
Best regards,
Sebastián.
Hello, I need your help.When my E50 phone startup it start to ask lock code, 12345 but this code not working. What should I do? I am waiting your answer. Thanks