Email Problems. Any advice or trade in my phone?

[erikzen]

I'm considering whether or not to return this phone and trade for something else. I come from a series of Palm phones and while a bit clunky, the email seemed to work more smoothly. Now that Verizon is offering Palm again I'm wondering if I should try to switch back and eat the restocking fee and spend $50 more to get the Pre Plus.

My problems with the Eris are:

Gmail - while this works fine for me, Gmail is all about storage so there are lots of emails on the phone. I believe the phone is just pulling emails from the Google server so there is no way to delete them on your phone, unless you delete them from your account. Since it works fine I could take all of my personal and work emails and forward to Gmail and have all my emails sent to my phone without a problem. However, I prefer to keep my accounts seperate so I can respond from individual accounts. Otherwise I have people responding to my Gmail account and that is not convenient in terms of working on my desktop. How do others feel about Gmail on the Eris?

Exchange Server - This part of the email works perfectly. However this is the least important aspect to me. This email account is for my full time job and I am not in a position where I travel or need to respond to emails after hours. Getting work emails on my phone is a convenience, not a necessity.

IMAP/POP Email - This function is most important to me. I have a small consulting business in addition to my full time job and it's critical I can receive and respond to emails from clients and potential clients at all times. I also have several other personal and business related addresses I also need to receive.

However, with these accounts I experience some strange things. First, I am often getting a "force closed" error with mail. This happens once or twice a day. All I need to do is open the application again so it is an annoyannce and not a total deal breaker but not a good sign.

More importantly, the email program seems to have a mind of its own as to whether or not it is going to retrieve email and when it is going to delete it from the phone's inbox. Sometimes I won't get any email in my inbox for a day or two. Then I'll wake up in the morning and some of my emails will be there and others will not.

I've also tried refreshing the inbox manually and it will delete the emails that are already in the inbox and give me a "no mail" message.

Maybe I just have some settings wrong like whether or not the mail should remain on the server, but I've checked those settings and everythuing seems to be right.

If anyone has any experience or advice with this please let me know. Even if you've had the same problems let me know that too so I can take it into consideration.

 

[wyzzerdd]

Have you tried any of the email apps on the market? Sounds like the current email app your using is quite buggy.

 

[Jonny Kansas]

There's another thread here where a former blackberry user has issues with email. I'm at work and on break, so I can't find it now, but ill be home in about 2.5 hours and will try to find it. Someone suggested an app from the market and a few others agreed. Ill let you know what it is when I can Gutmann to my computer and/or check my pop/imap settings. I only use the native email app for one account I don't use much, but have not had issues with it deleting emails. It does seem to not retrieve hey often, but I use a task killer and it's. Not ignored because I don't get important email there.

Please stand by. Well get you through this!

 

[Jonny Kansas]

IMAP/POP Email - This function is most important to me. I have a small consulting business in addition to my full time job and it's critical I can receive and respond to emails from clients and potential clients at all times. I also have several other personal and business related addresses I also need to receive.

So, I didn't find the exact thread that I mentioned earlier, but I found this that may help...

http://www.droidforums.net/forum/dr...66-droid-hints-pop3-gmail-forwarding-you.html

This offers step-by-step instructions to have Gmail check your other e-mail accounts. The BEST PART!? You can set it to "send mail as," so you can check your POP3/IMAP e-mail accounts using the much more stable Gmail app, AND have your e-mails returned with the address you wish. [ie. you use Gmail to pull in your e-mail from AOL, and can set it up so that when you reply to an e-mail from your AOL account, the other person sees "[email protected]" instead of your Gmail address.

The moderator that wrote this has 3 POP accounts, so I'm assuming each one can be set with a different reply from address, but I've scrolled through at least 4 pages and haven't seen anyone say otherwise or ask.

If nothing else, I'm sure you can send him a message and he can let you know if it's possible to have each individual account have it's own reply from, or however that works.

Also, the e-mail app that I mentioned earlier that I've seen suggested came up as well in that thread. It's called K9. I searched the market using just K9 as my keyword, and it popped up.

Hope this works for you!

If you start communicating with the thread I posted the link to, please stop back here and let me know if that helped!

 

[640k]

IMAP/POP Email - This function is most important to me. I have a small consulting business in addition to my full time job and it's critical I can receive and respond to emails from clients and potential clients at all times. I also have several other personal and business related addresses I also need to receive.

So, I didn't find the exact thread that I mentioned earlier, but I found this that may help...

http://www.droidforums.net/forum/dr...66-droid-hints-pop3-gmail-forwarding-you.html

This offers step-by-step instructions to have Gmail check your other e-mail accounts. The BEST PART!? You can set it to "send mail as," so you can check your POP3/IMAP e-mail accounts using the much more stable Gmail app, AND have your e-mails returned with the address you wish. [ie. you use Gmail to pull in your e-mail from AOL, and can set it up so that when you reply to an e-mail from your AOL account, the other person sees "[email protected]" instead of your Gmail address.

The moderator that wrote this has 3 POP accounts, so I'm assuming each one can be set with a different reply from address, but I've scrolled through at least 4 pages and haven't seen anyone say otherwise or ask.

If nothing else, I'm sure you can send him a message and he can let you know if it's possible to have each individual account have it's own reply from, or however that works.

Also, the e-mail app that I mentioned earlier that I've seen suggested came up as well in that thread. It's called K9. I searched the market using just K9 as my keyword, and it popped up.

Hope this works for you!

If you start communicating with the thread I posted the link to, please stop back here and let me know if that helped!

Thanks Johnny, now tell them what they won!!!

I have all of my POP3 accounts forwarded through GMAIL and am able to reply to emails sent through those accounts, even on my phone (i've tested this).

you can't compose emails on the phone, from those accounts, but you can from gmail.com, which works very well from the phone. so if you absolutely had to create an email from one of those accounts, you could certainly do it that way.

also, to the OP, you said that you want to keep your accounts separate. this is something i hear/read alot. when you apply labels to your incoming accounts, they are sorted into gmail folders that is essentially keeping those emails separate. if you select the "skip the inbox" option, they'll only go to their folders. the only downside with this method is, you won't get new mail notification on your phone.

when you have emails labeled in gmail, the labels appear in the inbox of your phone also. this makes it easy to identify the origin of POP3 accounts, etc.

now the problems that you've experienced where mail stays in your account, even after deleting it, etc,; this is a short-coming wtih POP3 technology. POP3 is designed as sort of a one-way communication. you can download messages and you can send messages and that's really it. most clients support the ability to "leave message on the server" which sort of invokes a flag that lets the client know that this message was already downloaded.

if you prevent your client from leaving messages on the server, the messages will actually be removed from your POP3 account and never downloaded again. so if you lose your client settings or fail to backup your inbox, those mail messages are gone forever.

some people have had problems with gmail and their email providers which limited their ability to use gmail to check their POP3 accounts. in those situations, these users typically use either K-9 Mail or Touchdown as an alternative to the default email client.

 

[Jonny Kansas]

now the problems that you've experienced where mail stays in your account, even after deleting it, etc,; this is a short-coming wtih POP3 technology. POP3 is designed as sort of a one-way communication. you can download messages and you can send messages and that's really it. most clients support the ability to "leave message on the server" which sort of invokes a flag that lets the client know that this message was already downloaded.

if you prevent your client from leaving messages on the server, the messages will actually be removed from your POP3 account and never downloaded again. so if you lose your client settings or fail to backup your inbox, those mail messages are gone forever.

Dangit! Knew I forgot SOMETHING...

 

[erikzen]

Thanks for all the replies. I have been using the app that came with the phone thinking it would be better integrated than a third party app. Maybe not.

I'll look into some of the suggestions either using K9 or Gmail. I'll probably try both.

I'll be sure to post what happens here.

 

[640k]

part of what makes android great, is the ability to integrate any application as an alternative to what was supplied.

 

[Mark16q]

Thanks for all the replies. I have been using the app that came with the phone thinking it would be better integrated than a third party app. Maybe not.

I'll look into some of the suggestions either using K9 or Gmail. I'll probably try both.

I'll be sure to post what happens here.

I've been going thru your exact problem. K-9 seems to work well enough that I'm considering keeping the phone. Still some time to trade in and while frustrated with how poorly some of the basics are handled, encouraged by how quickly better apps are showing up.

mg

 

[erikzen]

I installed K-9 this afternoon and it seems to be working well. I actually had been using a service called Fusemail which allows me to combine multiple email addresses into one but it didn't work with the HTC/native email app. It works perfectly with K-9. It doesn't solve the problem of having the ability to respond via different email addresses but I can live with that if I can reliably get my emails and manage them in one account on my phone.

 

[640k]

I installed K-9 this afternoon and it seems to be working well. I actually had been using a service called Fusemail which allows me to combine multiple email addresses into one but it didn't work with the HTC/native email app. It works perfectly with K-9. It doesn't solve the problem of having the ability to respond via different email addresses but I can live with that if I can reliably get my emails and manage them in one account on my phone.

this is what gmail already does for you. there are more benefits with using gmail than another service, especially when using a google powered phone.

something to think about.

 

[lcbabii]

i got locked out my droid eris and i didnt remember my password for my email so i went online and reseted it and it still wont let me log in to unlock my phone
HELP!!

 

[wyzzerdd]

Go to verizon and have them fix it.