IMAP or POP

[capersHTC]

Hello,

I am just setting up a new mail app on my phone and am given the choice of either IMAP or POP!

I am used to what POP does, but have never used IMAP.

Which on should I use?

 

[Unforgiven]

AFAIK imap is necessary if you want your email synced (i.e. read an email on your computer the notification on your phone goes away, delete an email in on your phone and it is deleted online as well).

 

[lunatic59]

Basically an IMAP account maintains the mail on the server while a POP account moves it to the local client. If you check your email in an IMAP account and find 20 new messages but read only ten of them, when you check later from a different computer or device new mail plus all twenty messages are there, with 10 marked as read. If it were a POP account, there would be only new mail and the earlier twenty would only exist on the machine or phone you checked. If you told POP to leave a copy on the server, it would download a copy to each client that checked leaving multiple copies permanently on each machine.

Similar with sent mail.

 

[Crashdamage]

Wikipedia has good information on the differences between IMAP vs POP3 and the advantages and disadvantages of each. Much more to be found there or with a Google search than we have time to type out here.