I was somewhat surprised at The Nokia E71′s native email capabilities.
Being a previous owner of Nokia s60 devices like the N95 & N80, I purchased the E71 with the ‘wild’ idea that it would have REAL email client experience, something more advanced than what you’d find on the N Series phones.
What a dissapointment.
The only difference, aesthetically, I can find between the Nokia E Series and N Series as far as the email exprience goes is that the E Series is able to display 1 line per message (whoop de doo) and can read your messages to you, which sounds more like a crippleware adjustment than a new feature.
Being marketed as an email/communicator centric device to go up against the likes of Blackberry, I was really expecting something out of the ordinary, a slick email client experience, but that was not to be. If you’ve used the email client on N Series phones, you’ll already know how limited it is. It’s an email client suited for occasional use, but if you’re after something a little more serious and want that desktop email client experience, you will have to look elsewhere.
And that’s what I did….
So first up I headed over to Nokia (email.nokia.com) and downloaded their next generation email client. Now this looked a LOT better! It was like going from DOS to Windows, the UI is more GUI than UI which is great, and with PUSH email functionality, fantastic! Using the application for a few hours it wasn’t long until I started encountering it’s limitations.
1) PUSH email sometimes doesn’t arrive instantaneously
2) Only the last x days of email messages are stored
3) No IMAP functionality
Now I understand this program is still in beta so these issues can be excused, but on face value, kudos to Nokia for upgrading what is an ageing email messaging system.
BUT I WANT SOMETHING NOW!!
I’ve tried Seven’s PUSH email offering, but that still uses Nokia’s arcade messaging system.
FINALLY IT HAS ARRIVED!
Profimail
This has got to be the BEST email client I have used on a Nokia s60 device so far. The features are comparable to a thick client experience:
- Various signatures (though plain-text only at this stage)
- Upto 30 mailboxes
- Filters!! On a mobile device?? What the?!
- HTML emails can be viewed
- and the list goes on….
You really have to download it and test it for yourself to truly appreciate this program. The interface is also customisable by adjusting the font sizes and colour schemes.
THIS is what the E-Series email client SHOULD have been!
Okay so the email client experience has been taken care of, well done LCG! But what about Push Email?
There are various ways to get the push experience on a mobile device, but one method that I have recently discovered to be the most easiest to implement and also seems to be widely supported is IMAP IDLE.
“
In e-mail technology, IDLE is an IMAP feature described in RFC 2177 that allows a client to indicate to the server that it is ready to accept real-time notifications.” — quoted from Wikipedia
IMAP IDLE (as I understand) is where the client can be configured to send ‘keep alive’ packets to the IMAP mail server so that the mail server does not close the connection to the client. The keep alive packet intervals can be set at x minute intervals so that you always remain connected to the IMAP mailserver and are able to receive real-time email notifications.
Nokia’s default email client for the E71 does not support IMAP IDLE, I believe the E6x does though and there is an option to set this in the menu, but not the E71.
When setting up an IMAP email box in the E71, there is an option to set how often to poll for email, the minimum time being 5 minutes. In my case however, my mobile network operator disconnects every 3 minutes when no net activity has occured, this leaves a gap of around 2 minutes when you are left in the dark and the phone reconnects to update the mailbox.
With Profimail you can not only specify whether your mail server is IMAP IDLE compliant, but also set the keep alive intervals, in my case every 3 minutes.
Note that you will also have to confirm whether your IMAP server actually supports the IMAP IDLE function because I found out my previous server didn’t, so I migrated my mail to gmail which does support IMAP IDLE.
Now with the combination of LCG Profimail and Gmail, I now have a thick client, push email experience on my mobile device!
Whooo hooooO!
Tags: E-71, E71, IMAP, Nokia, Nokia E-71, Nokia E71, Profimail, push email
December 17, 2008 at 12:37 am |
[...] Mark Peterson recently purchased an E71 and has documented his experience with Push email… [...]
December 17, 2008 at 10:52 am |
Actually, I consider the fact that Nokia Email only shows X days of messages. I mean, mobile email is for relatively quick (< 1 day) communication. If I don’t answer something in that timeframe, I am either going to archive it, or it is something that will take thought and I will get to it when I have some time and that will be when I am on a fatter client.
Sure, it should probably be configurable, but I do like it that way and it keeps the interface cleaner and my concentration on the more recent (and pressing) messages.
December 17, 2008 at 11:00 am |
Agreed, though I think it’s a case of different strokes for different folks. Why not start with a well equipped email client and have the user disable features as they see fit, that way the client can satisfy the light users, or the users that are rarely tethered to a desk and require good (not adequate) email functionality.
January 24, 2009 at 9:42 pm |
thank you…very much
March 7, 2009 at 1:44 am |
“Nokia’s default email client for the E71 does not support IMAP IDLE”
In fact it does, at least with the “200″ firmware that is current now (March 2009) – not sure if it did with the old one.
Mail client features aside, messages in my IMAP mailbox arrive within < 30 seconds on my phone from when they hit the mailbox on the server.
March 7, 2009 at 12:35 pm |
@ Betabug
You are, in fact, wrong.
Have a thorough read of my blog again.
The native Nokia email application still does not support IMAP IDLE, it will only receive emails automatically during the 3 minute connection period, after which time the connection is closed until next POLL.
The new Nokia Mail application also does not support or intend to support IMAP IDLE because it uses a push technology similar to Blackberry.
Blackberry uses it’s own backchannel simlar to SMS to send a message to the phone when an email is ready to be pushed, the phone then awakes it’s reciever to receive the email. This is a similar way in which Nokia’s new mail client works, except at this stage it is using SMS to do this, which is why sometimes emails aren’t received until minutes or hours later because it is competing with SMS traffic. In future, Nokia want’s to operate it’s own channel similar to Blackberry through mobile operators and offer a Blackberry style service to users.
Nokia is about to compete with Blackberry because they know they can win the war since their marketshare is larger, and the new Nokia Mail client can be installed on E Series business phones, and N series phones, which means they can tap into a wider market, not just business users. The biggest giveaway of this is actually written on their website where it says “How much will it cost”
Go have a read, think about it, then come back…
March 7, 2009 at 8:19 pm |
@markpeterson
Yeah, I re-read your post. So, am I to take your word for gospel, or should I rather believe the tcp trace I ran on port 143 of my IMAP server? Maybe I should just say that and stop there, so we could have “claim and counter claim”, with both not providing any data.
But let’s not get tacky, here is the IMAP conversation that I see. The client is the built-in mail client on my e71, the server is uw-imapd on my own server:
Client: 11 IDLE
Server: + Waiting for DONE
Server: * OK Timeout in 30 minutes
Server: * OK Timeout in 28 minutes
Server: * OK Timeout in 26 minutes
Server: * OK Timeout in 24 minutes
Server: * OK Timeout in 22 minutes
…at this point I send a message to this mailbox, so… “You’ve Got Mail”, as they say on AOL:
Server: * 2 EXISTS
* 2 RECENT
* OK Timeout in 20 minutes
Client: DONE
Server: 11 OK IDLE completed
Client: 12 UID SEARCH 1:2
… and so on, here the client goes to fetch the header fields of the new message. This is very much a typical IMAP IDLE conversation.
“IMAP IDLE (as I understand) is where the client can be configured to send ‘keep alive’ packets to the IMAP mail server so that the mail server does not close the connection to the client.” You do not correctly understand that. IDLE is a way for the client to tell the server: “I’m not doing anything right now, but if somethign arrives, I’d like to know.” It is the server that sends keep-alive packets – if at all, since the protocol actually does not declare them “must have”, but they help e.g. to keep the connection open through NAT.
“When setting up an IMAP email box in the E71, there is an option to set how often to poll for email, the minimum time being 5 minutes.” I don’t see such a setting. Either the client had been updated with the “200″ firmware for the e71, or else you were maybe looking at a POP3 mailbox?
“In my case however, my mobile network operator disconnects every 3 minutes when no net activity has occured” … I think this is where your real problem is, this combined with an IMAP server that does not send a keep-alive packet every 2 minutes or so. Don’t blame the built-in mail in the e71 for this though, it does all it ever could.
“Go have a read, think about it, then come back…”
I hope you don’t mind that I went and checked the facts instead? Reading and thinking about are very good activities, but a bit of practical research goes a long way to make them more productive.
March 16, 2009 at 11:14 am |
Fair enough… I’m enjoying a coffee and donut right now so I don’t want to spoil the mood.
Basically what I’m trying to communicate at large is that IMAP or not, the Profimail application leaves Nokia’s native messaging client as well as it’s next-gen email client for dead.
March 22, 2009 at 12:01 am |
Hi guys
i just downloaded this profimail but somehow I’m able to receive but not to send mails.. I’m using a Gmail account. For incoming mails I said, imap.googlemail.com and for outgoing smtp.googlemail.com should be right? Then in the advanced settings I retyped my gmail adress as well as my password in the SMTP fields.. right? IMAP port 993 and SMTP port 465
can anyone imagine what the problem is?
best
chris
April 17, 2009 at 5:44 pm |
[...] Todas las funciones podés verlas en este link y una buena reseña en el blog de Mrk Peterson [...]
May 25, 2009 at 3:17 am |
Информативно,продолжай в том же духе
May 26, 2009 at 4:39 pm |
Огромное СПАСИБО! Этот блог – супер!!!