POP3 email is behaving like IMAP

[sjones]

I've searched the forums for this but can't find anything quite like my issue...

I've recently updated to Android 2.2.1, an my email app now behaves differently (not in a good way). Phone is an HTC Hero.

I use a POP3 account on my phone to download my work email when I'm out & about, so I can take action if something is kicking off whilst I'm away from the office. Once I'm back in the office I fire up Outlook on my computer and go through my mail properly.

How it USED to work:
1. Download mail on the phone, have a look, reply, etc. At this point mail is left on the server.
2. Get into the office, download mail to Outlook. At this point mail is deleted from the server.
3. The mails remain locally on the phone too, until I actively delete them myself. Sometimes it's useful to look back at an old mail, or keep it on the phone.

Now things have changed. Here's how it works NOW since the ROM update:
1. Download mail on to the phone. Mail is left on the server.
2. Get into the office, download mail to Outlook. Mail is deleted from the server.
3. Suddenly the downloaded mail disappears from the phone! It's as if the phone didn't really keep the mail locally - more like it synchronised with the latest state of the server (which is now empty of mail).

This behaviour is what I would expect of an IMAP setup, but not POP3. I can't find any settings to change this behaviour, and Googling around suggests it might be a 'feature' of the 2.2 upgrade.

Any thoughts / suggestions to restore the old behaviour of the email app? (One thing I should point out: switching to an IMAP account and leaving mail on the server isn't an option for me: I get a LOT of mail with a lot of big attachments. The server needs to be cleared once Outlook has downloaded).

Any contributions gratefully received!

 

[takeshi]

Use another POP email client or revert.

 

[djmagic]

when i got mail to my phone it would delete it from the server ...not what i wanted. i want to get mail on my phone and delete it off my phone but still have it on the server so when i get home i can read again etc etc ... any advice.. did anything work for you?

 

[sjones]

I've had no success yet. Tonight I'll download a few email clients and try them out. A web search suggests that this is a 'feature' of the new Android software, rather than the email client on the phone, but obviously more investigations are nedeed.

djmagic - I don't quite have your problem. The Email app is set to never delete messages from the server, so they are always still there for my Outlook package to download. (Settings > Server settings > Delete mail from server: never)

I don't want to revert to the old ROM, as there's a lot about the updated version that I like.

I suppose a (slightly clunky) workaround would be to have a copy of my emails sent to a Gmail account, then have the phone sync with that - so I have two separate copies of my email: one for the phone, one for the computer.