IMAP As An Alternative To Push Email
Sebastián 12. November 2007 :: email, imap, pop, push mail
We have previously covered personal solutions for push email. These solutions include installing specific application and are dependant on the service provider. Using the push email service means that we are granting access to our email to the 3rd party. We also depend on the will of the application provider to keep the service free.
This time we will look into another option for accessing our email. It’s called IMAP email access and although it’s a very well known solution it’s not used that often on the mobile devices. Any IMAP server will provide the features I’m going to describe. Let’s have a look at what is IMAP.
IMAP and its advantages
IMAP stands for Internet Mail Access Protocol and it is used as a protocol for accessing email. Its advantages compared to other protocols are important. IMAP was designed to provide an alternate way to access emails. The main tasks are computed by the server and not by the client (device). Let’s point out some of its advantages:
- only headers are downloaded; this cuts data costs
- attachments are downloaded on request (i.e. they are not downloaded by default)
- most importantly, using IMAP means that we get new email notifications
The first two advantages may seem trivial to us, because the E50 allows for header download only even when we access our email via POP. It’s also possible to truncate messages at a determined number of kilobytes which is useful for those paying for the transferred . But most importantly, the new email notification is a central advantage. This is not possible on the POP protocol.
What does this mean? Literally, it means almost push email. The E50 connects to our mailbox and stays connected until we close the Messaging application. The best way to avoid disconnecting is pretty obvious: press the Menu key, and then Exit, and you will be on the main screen. Messaging will be running on the background, connected to your email account through IMAP, waiting for a server notification of a new email. It will automatically download the new email header.
Advantages over other solutions
- native support on IMAP servers; Gmail provides this for free!
- no dependence on third party services
- no access to our email by third parties
- no need to install any application, the native email client works perfect; the E50 supports all functions of the IMAP protocol
- any IMAP capable server will provide you these features.
- stable connection (since we are not dependent on a 3rd party services)
- immediate notification of new emails; as soon as the email is received on the server, a notification is sent to the mobile phone
Final Thoughts
Due to a problem of mobile communications service providers, sometimes you will be disconnected from your IMAP account and perhaps you will not know that this happened. This is because some providers have an infrastructure not adequate to maintain data channels and voice/message channels simultaneously. You can notice this if you keep the data connection opened and make call or send an SMS at the same time. Your phone notifies you that the data connection is killed before the call can be made, and reactivated after the call or sending an SMS.
The only one to blame here is the communications service provider, because they are working on the edge of their infrastructure capabilities. According to the GSM standards and EDGE specifications, this should happen only in the case of cell overload (e.g. Christmas, New Year, etc.). In my country (Argentina) this is how things normally work (and my provider is a French company, Telecom France, here called Telecom Personal Argentina).
If you decide to use IMAP access, check that your E50 is effectively connected to the server. You can check this by checking the options menu in your Inbox or in the Messaging Centre. If you see the option Disconnect you are obviously connected and vice versa.
Comment [11]
Personal Solutions For Push E-Mail On The E50
Sebastián 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.
Comment [7]
Speedlinking 15. November 2006
Jaro 15. November 2006 :: bible, blog list, e50, email, nokia, poll, review, s60, sms, tips, upgrade
Hi guys, there are couple of posts around the mobile blogs which caught my attention lately. I thought I would highlight them here:
- Antony shows how to read Bible in S60 phone
- according to the Tommi’s poll, Nokia default ringing tone causes physical pain to the 38% of people
- did you wonder if you can upgrade your Nokia E50 to Feature Pack 1? Well, the answer is no and Tommi explains why.
- Darla Mack looks closer at the pull email – a feature almost forgotten
- Daniel from e61life created a list of Nokia blogs, the best thing is that you can subscribe to this list and get the latest news from the Nokia blogosphere in one feed
- Nico wrote a very good review of Nokia E50 a few days ago, check it out
- write your text messages faster with these messaging tips
Comment [1]
Solution for Gmail Mobile Network Unavailable (updated)
Jaro 9. November 2006 :: e50, email, gmail, mobile, nokia
Like many of you I have also installed Google for mobiles on my Nokia E50 right after it was announced. My excitement was quickly replaced by frustration. Google Mobile application denied to work smoothly on my phone. The message I was getting and many of you are getting too was:
Network Unavailable: this program requires a working
data connection. Please check your signal strength.
There are many smart people out there and it didn’t take long and someone found a solution. On your pc switch your Gmail display language to English (US) and everything should work smoothly. Let us know if this solution worked for you. If you know any other ways how to make Google Mobile work please share.
I will soon explore the application on my Nokia E50 and will post some screenshots. Stay tuned!
UPDATE: just a quick note that there is another solution to this problem offered directly by Google. Check it out, it might help you to get the mobile Gmail working.
Comment [1]
Two things
Jaro 11. October 2006 :: e50, email, nokia, pushemail, review
Hi guys, I’ve got two things for you to check out. I collect interesting links about Nokia E50 so I thought why to keep them for myself if I could share them with you!
What got my attention a few days ago was a review by WirelessAndy. He writes very interesting Nit Picking Reviews and this time he went for the Nokia E50. Check it out and you’ll see why he calls the reviews nit picking ;).
I’m not sure if this is news for you but there is a new solution for the push email for Nokia E50 (and the whole Eseries). It was launched today by Cortado and the standard package costs $4.98 per month. It’s not the cheapest but if it works well I guess it’s worth the money. You can try it out one month for free.
250 MB mailbox, up to 3 email addresses, Outlook Web Access, professional spam filter, and virus protection. Print, fax, and Print-to-Screen as additional options.
There are also Business and Business Plus solutions available in case you need more webspace or want to use some of the advanced functions. By the way, do you know of any free push email service for the Nokia Eseries?
