Android and email?

[WoodiE55]

I've been looking at android phones for a while now and I like many other people are looking forward to the Droid X. The problem I'm having as a current Blackberry user is email. I've read an article on androidcentral.com that mentions the limitations of POP3 email on the android OS. They also provide a link to a possible fix by having gmail sync with the POP3 email but gmail will only do so once an hour.

With that said is there any other options? I manage a number of websites myself and have a few web servers. Email is a must to keep in touch with clients and having to wait an hour in between replies would never ever fly.

I currently have the Tour, which of course has the horrible trackball, but I'm debating on getting the Droid X (so long as I can get POP3 every 2-3 minutes) or upgrading to the Bold 9650.

Having all the cool new features of the Droid X would be neat but certainly not a need. POP3 email and battery life - those are the two things that are a must.

Any suggestions?

 

[A.Nonymous]

Not sure what the issue is as the article doesn't seem to say anything about POP support on it. There are settings for pop email on my Incredible, but I don't have any accounts that use POP so I can't test them out. I don't see why you couldn't schedule it to pop every 2-3 minutes. I'd be shocked if there wasn't a 3rd party app out there that did it if it's not supported natively.

 

[WoodiE55]

The article points it out here and provides a link to a possible fix...

But the drawback to this was that the rest of my e-mail accounts (using POP or IMAP) might have a much slower delivery time. But I had already began using my Gmail account as my primary, so this wasn

 

[takeshi]

IIRC the shortest polling interval is 5 minutes. You'll kill your battery with short polling intervals though.

Why are you relying on POP accounts if you want push delivery times? It's not a problem unique to Android. POP accounts just aren't designed to be used this way (fyi you don't even sync with POP accounts as it's not really possible). If you're insistent on going with Android you might want to see if your POP accounts can be replaced with aliases that forward to a push account.

Having all the cool new features of the Droid X would be neat but certainly not a need. POP3 email and battery life - those are the two things that are a must.

You might be better off with BIS then since it's designed to adjust polling intervals of POP accounts based on the activity of the account. Since BIS is doing all the polling and just pushing email to the BB as it's received polling intervals can be very short with no impact on the BB's battery life. There's really no direct equivalent in the Android world. Gmail's Mail Fetcher is the closest thing that I know of.

 

[SwatchDog]

You have a refresh option on your POP mail viewer. I actually turn off polling or set it to an extended period (30 or more mins) and simply click Refresh when I have time to look at email. Saves battery, and best of all, keeps me in control of email, instead of email controlling me... (I cannot ignore an email notification - psycho weakness, so this gives me a fighting chance.)

 

[A.Nonymous]

IIRC the shortest polling interval is 5 minutes. You'll kill your battery with short polling intervals though.

Why are you relying on POP accounts if you want push delivery times? It's not a problem unique to Android. POP accounts just aren't designed to be used this way (fyi you don't even sync with POP accounts as it's not really possible). If you're insistent on going with Android you might want to see if your POP accounts can be replaced with aliases that forward to a push account.

You might be better off with BIS then since it's designed to adjust polling intervals of POP accounts based on the activity of the account. Since BIS is doing all the polling and just pushing email to the BB as it's received polling intervals can be very short with no impact on the BB's battery life. There's really no direct equivalent in the Android world. Gmail's Mail Fetcher is the closest thing that I know of.

Took my response from me. I have to explain to users all the time that POP e-mail is not going to give them the same thing as push e-mail. The closest thing you could get is POPing your server every 30 secs or min or so. This is going to drain your battery in no time flat. As you said, this is a limitation of POP, not Android. If you set up your BB to POP your servers directly, you'll have the same issue.

 

[WoodiE55]

With my current Tour I use BIS which I can push my POP3 email to my BB and delivery times are nearly instant. For Android is there a BIS equivalent that I could use to do the same thing?

From what I'm getting out of the replies the best solution via Android so it seems so far, is to do what SwatchDog recommends and have email pushed out every 30mins and the ability to refresh as needed. Not the most ideal, but works.

 

[A.Nonymous]

With my current Tour I use BIS which I can push my POP3 email to my BB and delivery times are nearly instant. For Android is there a BIS equivalent that I could use to do the same thing?

From what I'm getting out of the replies the best solution via Android so it seems so far, is to do what SwatchDog recommends and have email pushed out every 30mins and the ability to refresh as needed. Not the most ideal, but works.

You can't push POP e-mail. It's technically impossible. It's a 3rd party solution. BIS uses a 3rd party address to see your mail accounts. It then uses this account to forward your e-mail to your phone. It may be popping your server once a minute or something, but it's still popping the server for mail. You can easily configure your mobile device (be it WinMo or BB or Android or whatever) to do the same thing, but you'll drain your battery life. If you've got a computer that's always on you could set it up to pop your mail accounts at frequent intervals and have it forward all your mail (via forwarding rule) to your gmail account. Your gmail account is then pushed to your phone.

 

[WoodiE55]

Ok got ya now.... that's what I was afraid of.