Any decent email app? IMAP issues

[dm33]

I've having issues with IMAP support in the built in HTC Mail app.

1. Email that I send is not being mirrored to the server. This works on my Mac and on my iPhone. It works for other folders. But emails sent from the Incredible do not get sent to the server. It is very important that I maintain a copy of sent emails. This is a potential deal breaker. There must be a solution to this.

2. IMAP Idle mode. Doesn't seem to work. Why not? Is there a good email client that support this mode? This allows email to show up immediately, not polling ever some number of minutes.

3. I've have problems with several emails. Email from Apple shows up as a random bunch of characters with no data. I think it maybe a signature confusing the app. I also often receive email with an attachment. It will show the attachment and say 1K remaining on the server (regardless of how much I told it to download). If I click to download the remaining, it says the email is no longer on the server... when it is. I can't see any text for the email. This works fine on an iPhone.

3. I've tried K-9. Its surprisingly bad. When scrolling, the background turns black. There's an easy fix to that. Doesn't inspire confidence in the app. And I can't get IMAP Idle mode to work with K-9 either.

Is there a solution to any of these problems?

Is the stock Android email app any better at this? How do you install that?

Thanks

 

[jamesoja]

BUMP.

I too am having the same issues and am looking for a solution.

Cheers!

 

[AlexNC]

The default Google branded Gmail program works great for me. It is pretty much instantaneous. I have done some tests with my laptop, sending myself emails, and also getting subscription replies in this forum show emails instantaneously on my laptop and phone. The only thing I do not like about it is that it has very limited file attachment abilities. I use Astro for that.

Make sure to delete your account in the HTC program if you switch to the Google one. Otherwise you will have two services running, wasting battery. Also check your Notifications setting within the program (hit the menu button) to ensure you have Notifications turned on. If you do not delete your account in the HTC program, make sure to at least turn of Notifications within the program so you are not getting duplicate Notifications for emails ... one for Google, one for HTC.

Also, make sure you have Sync turned on.

 

[ffeingol]

I had no issues with K-9 and IMAP IDLE other than it would suck the battery dry. A new release just came out the other day, so you may want to try again and see if you had the latest one.

 

[jamesoja]

I had no issues with K-9 and IMAP IDLE other than it would suck the battery dry. A new release just came out the other day, so you may want to try again and see if you had the latest one.

How were you able to turn on the IMAP IDLE setting in K-9? I am only able to see Polling frequency adjustments.

Thanks!

 

[ffeingol]

You want poll sent to none and use the push option.

 

[answerman]

Nope, IMAP Idle is still a nonentity for the most part in Android mail. I posted quite a bit about this a while back. K-9 mail is the only client that supports it at all, and from what I've heard it isn't even that reliable. I came from the Windows Mobile world, where we had the same issue with FlexMail being the only IMAP client that supported IDLE.

I don't know if we can expect this to change anytime soon, since Google likes to assume that you will be using a Gmail account, and if you aren't it's your problem. It leaves the business users like me out in the cold.

I agree... IDLE shouldn't be that hard to implement. And it would make a world of difference in battery life if we didn't have to do the "poll every X minutes" thing.

At least one good thing in the HTC mail app that I noticed: when you bring up the mail, it does a send/receive cycle automatically. At least you don't have to manually do it. I have my Incredible syncing 4 different IMAP accounts, set to poll once every 60 minutes for each account. When I open each account, the HTC mail client does the auto sync. The way I look at it (since I don't have audible notifications turned on) is that if I'm not looking at the phone, I don't know if I have new mail anyway... so opening the mail app isn't that much of an extra step (since it then syncs upon open). Not perfect, but at least I don't have to do the stupid "Menu/Send/Receive" thing I had to do on my WinMo phone. I can live with it.

 

[jamesoja]

You my friend may have just saved this for me. Cheers!

 

[ffeingol]

I think that you may find that K-9/IDLE will suck your battery dry in no time. I have an app called 'SystemPanel (from NextApp) that can show the network utilization. With IMAP IDLE enabled K-9 was keeping a constant network connection open (you could see the constant traffic in SystemPanel) and that would not allow the device to 'sleep' In a constant running state I was loosing 20% of the battery per hour. YMMV so give it a try. I think a lot of the issues have to do with the IDLE settings on your mail server vs. the IDLE settings in K-9. I'd be very interested in hearing your experience.