Setting up Email on the Smartphone

[goofy166]

I have a problem using my smartphone to send email. I have my outgoing server set to

smtp.earthlink.net

I can connect to my ISP and get my mail but any message I send returns a System Messages that says "can't find recipent".

What confuses me is that most ISP and email hosts doen't allow relaying and it seems to me when you are sending an email from a phone to an ISP you are essentially doing a relay.

Does anyone have any similar experience and know a way around it?

Mitch

[Kris Kumar]

Well one thing..u r not the only one seeing this problem...someone mentioned this on the MS newsgroup

here's the link to the thread...hope it gives some clues...

http://smartphone.modaco.com/viewtopic.php?t=88348

[goofy166]

Kris:

This is a great web site...that link you gave me helped confirm what I suspected. You need to use the ISP for the phone for your outgoing email, since most ISP's do not allow relaying. I have a t-mobile GSM account and I have no clue if they even have a mail server 8)

I will look into this more deeply and report back. Meanwhile I would love to hear what other folks are doing for sending email from there phones and there SMTP settings.

[Kris Kumar]

Glad that the link helped...

I have my own domain name..and NameZero.com which hosts the domain, provides its POP3+SMTP servers.

I can send and recv without problem.

I too have T-Mobile...they have POP3/SMTP server myemail.t-mobile.com
But will require authentication. And I dont know if it can help u.

Go to the My Tmobile site...In the Communication section, click on "My email from PC". You can configure ur POP3 mail box (also corporate exchange email with redirector). This enables u to access ur POP3 mails from any Web Browser. And also once u configure the account. Look under Settings->OPtions and it has POP Setting, which shows the user id/password to access the Tmobile mailbox, which is in turn ur ISP's mail box.

Basically ISP mailbox mirrored on T-Mobile which can then be accessed via Tmobile's POP3/SMTP server. Long route...doesnt seem efficient. But may do the trick.

[goofy166]

Wow thats very interesting information Kris. I think I understand the problem. I have my domain name hosted on a service called brinkter and I do believe theyallow me to have a mail server, so that might be the way to go, I have to look into it.

I am not sure I understand T-Mobile's Secure Mail Connector. Does this forward email sent to your outlook email account to the phone? How does it arrive? Must you use your phone's web browser then to get your email by going to the T-Mobile site? That seems pretty clunky.

[goofy166]

I think I figured out the t-mobile setup, and I put all the information into the SmartPhone email settings under Options.

user ID: 4152999332:[email protected]
pop: myemail.t-mobile.com
smtp: myemail.t-mobile.com
email: [email protected]

When I try to connect with the phone it dials but I get an error that it can't connect with the server.

Have you been successful at using the tmobile pop? It seems like it would be fine to use, if I could get it to work.

[Kris Kumar]

Secure Mail Connector enables access to Exchange/Outlook based corp mail. A program gets installed on the desktop which can access the Exchange Server, like inside the Corp network (inside firewall). This app has to be running for u to see ur exchange mails on the T-Mobile Web Page.

I am not sure how the communication takes place between desktop app and Tmobile site..I dont think they forward mail. Coz I am sure that they do not cache mails. (a. it would mean they have to have huge storage, b. privacy laws) I believe the desktop app (inside the firewall) keeps polling the t-mobile server to see if it needs any data. Based on that the desktop app sends info to the T-mobile site, which then gets displayed on the web browser.

So this is what happens, (the way I see it) U login in Tmobile site to see Exchange Mail, the Web Site waits for the next poll from the desktop client. Then requests for info from the desktop. Gets the mails list and shows on the Web Page. I want to view a mail, the T-mobile web site again has to wait for the poll from the client, then requests the mail details. This goes on, looks in-efficient but works fine I guess.

I am using a similar connector app provided by Sprint PCS. Since it works a little better than T-Mobile's, I never switched to T-Mobile app. Lucky for my Sprint PCS didnt close down the connector when I cancelled the Sprint PCS Cell plan.

Unfortunately Network trace doesnt get u much info becoz its all HTTPS.

The above is for Exchange/Outlook mail. For POP3 mail, the tmobile site of course doesnt need this complex setup. It can fetch email on demand directly from the POP3 server becoz it is not behind any firewall.

Then on top of this TMobile has its on POP3 servers, which enables u to access the mailboxes u setup via its POP3 accounts...all this technically pretty cool.

[Kris Kumar]

Sorry I have never used the Tmobile POP server...Will check it out though.

And ur settings looks fine to me.

Kris

[goofy166]

Ah-ha, well that explains why the Secure Mail doodadd failed to work on my computer, I don't use exchange. I thought it was a needed component but now I see I don't need it. I look forward to your finding out if you can use the pop settings on T-Mobile. It might be that my phone has a weak connection to the server from here (only 1 antenna bar is showing).

[Kris Kumar]

I tried..it worked...downloaded all my POP3 mails thru the TMobile POP3 server..

The settings were identical to urs, except for the user id/password.

It has to be the signal strength.

BTW...direct POP3 is way faster than thru the Tmobile POP3..well it had to be...

[Kris Kumar]

An after thought...

1. Is the mail setup on the phone using IMAP instead of POP3 for tmobile.
2. Typos..of course.

[goofy166]

When I awoke this morning my phone had two SMS messages from "700" . Very strange. They where forwarded from the tmobile server. I don't understand why they came in as SMS, I thought they should appear as email. I only had headers because that is how I left my settings, and there is no "mark for download" so I can't retrieve them.

I am still not sure this is working right, but the fact that you where able to send an receive mail means it should, I just have to unravel this mystery.

Thanks for your valuable help Kris.

[goofy166]

BTW I am using POP not IMAP for the t-mobile stuff, which is correct, right?

[Kris Kumar]

POP3 is correct...

And the SMS..well TMobile provides notifications/alerts (chk Settings->Alerts) for the new mail that comes into ur POP mailbox...

Its configurable...like alert when a mail from a person comes..or when a mail marked important comes in..pretty useful...but not in ur case...coz ideally the phone's pop3 mail client should pull down the mail from the tmobile server.

BTW...can u see the mails from ur ISP on the My Tmobile page, after u configured the web site. Coz thats the first step to proper configuration.

I can see all my POP3 account mails on the My Tmobile page.

[goofy166]

Yes I see my email on My PC Mail at T-Mobile.
So the SMS is a feature that lets me know mail has arrived, but I must pull it down before I can read it? Where is this configured? I will go out now and see if I can get my email with the new settings.

[goofy166]

I tried the new settings and kept getting a message that the server could not be found, and to check my settings.

Eventually the phone kept freezing, so I reset the phone and started over, entering just the minimum settings to get my email and on the web. I got my email just once, and after that it says Connecting and then gives me the above error.

I bought this phone from Arne at PPCW.net and it worked fine when I first got it, but now its working terrible. I am really disappointed. I never dropped it so I am stumped as to why its acting so weird.

Mitch

[Kris Kumar]

I know how it feels..when things which were working fine earlier wont work....

1. I hope u tried it from two different geographical location. Assuming the cell tower in one location is down or something..long shot...but a possibility according to Murphy's law :-)

2. GPRS : Is it working fine. Can u access Internet - IE/MSN?

3. I have noticed that once u get the connecting error "unable to connect, check settings/coverage" mesg twice...u have to power off and power on the phone. For some reason the network stack gets messed up. I thought this was a problem with the Red-E dev kit phone (I raised a bug with Everlink) but looks like its a Smartphone Network stack issue.

U know what...I found one day that Mail and MSN will work and IE wont. No matter what I did, I can download mails, chat on MSN. But cannot access a web site. Weird !! And finally after 4-5 hours things were back to normal...dont know what happened. Luckily someone else has also seen this problem...

But sorry..cant offer much help in ur case..have run out ideas :-(

[goofy166]

This is getting strange. I decided to do what I call a semi-reset, which is to hold down the power and record and hit the action key and let go instead of hold it down which gives the three color canary screen. Then I removed the battery, reinserted it, and powered up. Tried my email...I got it...from my home where the signal is weak. So whats up with that? 86 freaking messages came in. Man this is bizarre. I guess I have taken your point about powering on and off to an extememe? Quesition is will this work again? Even deeper, what the heck does it mean?

I am pretty sure my phone is hossed because it will freeze sometimes when all I am doing is entering settings in the email. I am waiting for Arne to get back to me.

Thanks for feeling my pain :roll:

I did try many geographical locations in the SF Bay area. I stated to wonder if the phone was fine and the t-mobile network was screwy. I did not call them because I figured there was no one who would have a clue about what I was talking about.

Regarding GPRS, I try that first, because if I can't get a web page, email aint gonna work and yep, no web page, IE just says page not found.

Thanks for the support. I'll keep you posted.

Mitch

[goofy166]

PS I was able to access the web with IE also. Lets see how long this lasts. I won't do anything to the phone, not add anything or change any settings and see how long it works :oops:

[Kris Kumar]

I did not call them because I figured there was no one who would have a clue about what I was talking about.

[Kris Kumar]

I did not call them because I figured there was no one who would have a clue about what I was talking about.

Slippery fingers...

What I wanted to say in the last post was that...T-Mobile Tier 2 and Tier 3 support is pretty good. They have info on Smartphone. I dont think they have it by individual model like I-Mate/Red-E etc. But I was surprised when I had called in regarding inability to access WAP pages. And I told them I have "Microsoft Smartphone", the guy put me on hold for a sec and then started guiding me thru the Data Connection Settings menu...adding GPRS setting etc.. I was amazed. So they do know.

But the trick is to jump Tier 1, by telling them you have tried the basic power on/off and parts of the communication works etc.