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.
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