E-mail on Droid Charge and at home on Thunderbird

[brandonsmash]

First off: I'm new to both this forum and Android devices. I recently upgraded to a Droid Charge from a Blackberry Storm. So far I'm rather pleased, with a few glaring issues (the first and foremost being that there was no factory way to remove pre-installed bloatware apps!); I'm still working out the kinks, but just ran into a major one I can't seem to find solved in fora.

I have the phone mostly set up for how I want to use it, but I've noticed I'm having some problems with e-mail.
Namely, sometimes I leave my desktop at home running my e-mail client (Mozilla Thunderbird). I would like e-mail to all of my accounts (3 GMail, configured for POP and 1 private domain [also POP]) to arrive at both my computer and the phone. This wasn't a problem with the Blackberry; at one point I did have to tell the Blackberry to quit syncing messages as read to the desktop, but I always received e-mails to both devices.

Now, after having set up my Droid Charge with my e-mail accounts, if my desktop e-mail client is running I don't get any e-mails to my phone. Well, sort of. It's inconsistent. It appears that some test e-mails I sent from/to my own e-mail addresses with Thunderbird arrived at both devices with Thunderbird open, and e-mail I sent to myself with GMail's webmail with Thunderbird closed arrived (though it takes 5 minutes? Really? Even with push?). However, I received a work e-mail this morning (this is important!) and it arrived to my desktop just fine but NOT my mobile (this is very bad). It doesn't show up on the Droid Charge in either the email app or the gmail app, even when I do a manual refresh. In fact, to get the info to my phone I had to log into gmail webmail on the computer and forward it to myself. WTF?

My Thunderbird settings are configured to leave messages on the server and not delete. Is there something I'm missing? Is there maybe a more comprehensive app to manage messages? Frankly, I'd love something exactly like the BB had: It consolidated SMS, MMS, calls, Facebook, and all e-mail accounts under one "Inbox" folder with options to separate as necessary. Thanks, folks! I appreciate the help.

 

[brandonsmash]

It's worth noting that when I set up the device with my e-mail address, it automagically synced everything just fine -- including messages that had been received and read in Thunderbird initially.

Hmm: It also appears that it's pretty random what gets through and what doesn't, and even whether or not Thunderbird is running. For instance, in the e-mail address I use for social networking and the like I received copies of my confirmation e-mails from this forum (though Thunderbird was active then). Awesome. However, I've received a few Facebook e-mails and the like around that time and since then, and they've arrived at the desktop but not the phone. Do I have something defective?

 

[takeshi]

If you have a POP account and any client is not configured to leave mail on the server then mail won't be accessible to the other clients. Mail can't be retrieved from a server if it isn't on a server. That's just one reason why I recommend moving away from POP accounts. They don't sync. They're very old tech and have very limited features. The Blackberry BIS helped to address some of the shortcomings of POP accounts but there's really no BIS equivalent in the Android world.

Gmail accounts can be set up as IMAP. IMAP accounts do sync. I'd recommend using that approach. Let the gmail app on your device configure your gmail accounts for you.

 

[brandonsmash]

If you have a POP account and any client is not configured to leave mail on the server then mail won't be accessible to the other clients. Mail can't be retrieved from a server if it isn't on a server. That's just one reason why I recommend moving away from POP accounts. They don't sync. They're very old tech and have very limited features. The Blackberry BIS helped to address some of the shortcomings of POP accounts but there's really no BIS equivalent in the Android world.

So with Gmail, what would you recommend? I'm definitely not about to ditch Gmail.

I did notice today, too, that when I receive messages on the Charge that I don't get them the other way round -- that is, they don't show up on my computer. I know Gmail doesn't delete messages by default, so the Droid must be marking them as read and not for sync.
Still, I don't know why I'm not getting ALL my messages to the Charge.

I also noticed that there's a flaw in the Calendar app. Events added to the calendar all show up in the list view, but it appears that the week/day view only shows one event per day or somesuch. I know the phone HAS the correct calendar because I can see the schedule and all the scheduled events for the day, but that's not displayed on the graph. I may have to go to the store and ask some questions. Rats.