rebel7254

This is another question that has been ignored in another forum. Hopefully someone here will help.

Now that I have a smart phone, I want to eliminate using text messages between my wife and myself. I thought a perfect way to accomplish this was to just use email with the smartphone. Well, it's not that simple.

Unless I'm missing something, the Notifications setting is an "all or nothing" type of deal. For example, if I want to get Notifications from the Gmail app when new mail arrives, then it has to apply across the board. I can set up multiple Gmail accounts within the app, but as far as I can tell there's no way to get notifications for account1@gmail.com and not account2@gmail.com. Well, I don't want to get notifications for my regular Gmail account. I only want it to notify me if my wife sends me a message. I figured I would be able to set up a separate Gmail account that was completely dedicated to the purpose of getting messages from my wife on my phone, but that does me no good unless I can make the phone only notify me when I get messages on that account.

Same thing goes with the "Messaging" app that came preinstalled on the phone. I can have as many accounts as I want, but there's only one place to specify whether I want Notifications enabled.

I just think this is a silly limitation. What I'd like to know is if I'm missing something in the Settings of these apps that will allow me to accomplish what I want, or if anyone can point me to another email app that can handle this?

brykins

K-9 Mail will let you set up your Google accounts at imap (and therefore get push email) and you can set notifications per account.

Another option would be to go with something like LiveProfile. It's a bit like Blackberry Messenger, in that you add each other as contacts and then can instant message each other. Shows delivered and read status of messages and also when the other is typing. Great for knowing that the Mrs has read the message about picking the kids up!

It's free and also works cross Apple and Blackberry as well.

(No connection - just an impressed user)

rebel7254

Maybe I'll try K-9 Mail out.

Would your second suggestion work if my wife doesn't have a smartphone? I should've mentioned before, but she doesn't have one.

brykins

Ah.....there's a problem. There's no LiveProfile yet for desktop, so if she hasn't got an Android/iPhone/Blackberry, that opton is a no-no.

Get her an Android :-)

rebel7254

I was able to figure it out in the Gmail app. All I had to do was edit the settings of the second account. I assumed that the settings were global before, but it just looked that way because I only had one account. Once I added a new one, it let me change the settings on it which were independent from the other one.

I did try K-9 for a bit, and I liked it, but it kept giving me duplicate notifications every time a new message came in. It would beep at me twice, say I had two unread messages, but when I viewed the Inbox of the account that the message was sent to, it only showed me one. The only place I could see the duplicate message was if I went to the K-9 home screen and opened "All Messages". It was weird. After trying to mess around with the settings for a while, I talked to someone else I know who has the Gmail app on his Droid 2, and he told me that the Gmail app could have different settings for multiple accounts, so I just decided to do that an uninstalled K-9.

The best thing I liked about K-9 during the short time I used it was the Dark theme option. I like that because it should save the battery a little bit since the backlight doesn't have to work as hard. Gmail won't let you change the theme, or at least as far as I'm aware.

Thanks for the help though. It was pleasant to have somebody actually respond instead of just being ignored.