Pocket Inbox - Does Anyone Really Use This For Email?

[Jason Dunn]

:really mad: I'm ready to throw my E200 out the nearest window. Here's the scenario: I took Thursday and Friday off for a little "work on the house and yard with my wife" vacation, so my email accounts have gotten very full. I was at a family gathering tonight, and with some downtime I checked my Pocket PC Thoughts email accounts - 72 new messages. Email triage time! One-handed email triage with a Smartphone is an awesome thing. When it works that is, and this is what my rant is about. :evil:

I opened up my email account on Pocket Inbox, Smartphone 2003 version, and did a SEND/RECIEVE. It took a while, but eventually all the messages were downloaded onto the phone. I went through all 72 of them, deleting spam, responding to a few, and deleting the messages I didn't need to act on. I then did another SEND/RECEIVE to process the changes. No new messages showed up, so I was done. The first problem is that I shouldn't have to do a SEND/RECEIVE to process the changes. When an email client makes a connection to an IMAP server, it stays connected as long as the TCP/IP connection is available. When you open Outlook and switch to an IMAP email account, is connects up to the server and downloads the messages - and it stays connected. If you move/mark a message for deletion, it's moved/marked for deletion immediately because it's connected. It doesn't disconnect until you shut down the software. That's the way email clients are supposed to work with IMAP.

So why am I so angry? Because when I sat down at my computer tonight and opened Outlook, all of the messages I had processed where downloaded from the server, fresh and marked as unread. That's right, it's like my email triage never happened! I wasted my time and have to re-do everything. I've seen this before with the Pocket PC email client, and the only way to avoid it happening there is to connect to the email account, do the email traige, do a send/recieve, then press the connect icon to disconnect. That usually works, but why should I have to resort to such voodoo to process my email? The problem that makes this scenario worse is that there is no CONNECT function on the Smartphone Inbox client - just a SEND/RECIEVE. It's like the Microsoft software developers don't know there's a difference between POP and IMAP.

The Smartphone client works perfectly my Exchange account, but for me it's highly problematic with IMAP accounts. Frankly, at the moment I'm livid that once again Microsoft has released software that works great with their software, but is completely dysfunctional with what the rest of the world is using. If you can't make an email client that can process email via IMAP, what's the point of saying it can do email? There's some serious room for improvement here, because right now the Smartphone Inbox application is at the rock bottom of functionality if it can't do something this simple.

[Jason Dunn]

:really mad: I'm ready to throw my E200 out the nearest window. Here's the scenario: I took Thursday and Friday off for a little "work on the house and yard with my wife" vacation, so my email accounts have gotten very full. I was at a family gathering tonight, and with some downtime I checked my Pocket PC Thoughts email accounts - 72 new messages. Email triage time! One-handed email triage with a Smartphone is an awesome thing. When it works that is, and this is what my rant is about. :evil:

I opened up my email account on Pocket Inbox, Smartphone 2003 version, and did a SEND/RECIEVE. It took a while, but eventually all the messages were downloaded onto the phone. I went through all 72 of them, deleting spam, responding to a few, and deleting the messages I didn't need to act on. I then did another SEND/RECEIVE to process the changes. No new messages showed up, so I was done. The first problem is that I shouldn't have to do a SEND/RECEIVE to process the changes. When an email client makes a connection to an IMAP server, it stays connected as long as the TCP/IP connection is available. When you open Outlook and switch to an IMAP email account, is connects up to the server and downloads the messages - and it stays connected. If you move/mark a message for deletion, it's moved/marked for deletion immediately because it's connected. It doesn't disconnect until you shut down the software. That's the way email clients are supposed to work with IMAP.

So why am I so angry? Because when I sat down at my computer tonight and opened Outlook, all of the messages I had processed where downloaded from the server, fresh and marked as unread. That's right, it's like my email triage never happened! I wasted my time and have to re-do everything. I've seen this before with the Pocket PC email client, and the only way to avoid it happening there is to connect to the email account, do the email traige, do a send/recieve, then press the connect icon to disconnect. That usually works, but why should I have to resort to such voodoo to process my email? The problem that makes this scenario worse is that there is no CONNECT function on the Smartphone Inbox client - just a SEND/RECIEVE. It's like the Microsoft software developers don't know there's a difference between POP and IMAP.

The Smartphone client works perfectly my Exchange account, but for me it's highly problematic with IMAP accounts. Frankly, at the moment I'm livid that once again Microsoft has released software that works great with their software, but is completely dysfunctional with what the rest of the world is using. If you can't make an email client that can process email via IMAP, what's the point of saying it can do email? There's some serious room for improvement here, because right now the Smartphone Inbox application is at the rock bottom of functionality if it can't do something this simple.

[encece]

I use inbox with my comcast pop account.

I Send/Receive messages. Process them. Send/Receive again. When I get to my PC, only the messages I retained on my phone are the only messages downloaded.

Now I have a friend at work who uses an i700 PPCPE. They try the same process, but the messages are not deleted on the server when they are deleted from the phone & changes are submitted. Very strange and inconsistent.

To your other point. I would expect that you'd have to perform a send/receive again to process changes. After all, it is true that the connection to the internet remains open...but the connection to your server becomes inactive when the requests are finished. If it remained open...you'd have always, blackberry-like email. Which we know is not available for Smartphones or PPCs yet.

So my answer to your poll was yes...it is working as expected.

[manywhere]

Welcome to IMAP hell... :roll:

Jason, maybe you should ask WebIS to make a Mail version for Smartphones as well? I've been testing and reviewing the WebIS Mail 2.0 for a little while now, and the IMAP implementation they have is way better than Pocket Inbox's!

[Mike Temporale]

Originally Posted by encece

Now I have a friend at work who uses an i700 PPCPE. They try the same process, but the messages are not deleted on the server when they are deleted from the phone & changes are submitted. Very strange and inconsistent.

That's exactly how mine works too, and it really bugs me. If I've deleted it on my device, then delete it from the server!

[Santa Fe]

Actually I like checking e-mail away from the PC with the Smartphone and responding to anything urgent but still having the rest of the mail on my server to deal when I'm back at the PC. But I don't get 100's of e-mails either.

[Jason Dunn]

Originally Posted by encece

I Send/Receive messages. Process them. Send/Receive again. When I get to my PC, only the messages I retained on my phone are the only messages downloaded.

That's the way it's supposed to work - you're lucky it does! Based on the poll results it looks like I'm not alone in my pain.

Originally Posted by encece

...but the connection to your server becomes inactive when the requests are finished. If it remained open...you'd have always, blackberry-like email.

Why not? Short of having to break the GPRS connection for an incoming/outgoing voice call, with IMAP it should maintain a connection to the server and alert you when new mail arrives.

[encece]

I would love if it worked that way. Is that the way it is intended/advertised to work?? I was under the impression that the GPRS connection remains open for immediate use initiated by the phone but an outside source could not initiate data transfer. It may be intentional so that devious outside agencies can't ring up your GPRS.

[Jason Dunn]

Originally Posted by encece

I was under the impression that the GPRS connection remains open for immediate use initiated by the phone but an outside source could not initiate data transfer. It may be intentional so that devious outside agencies can't ring up your GPRS.

Hmm...now that I think about it, you might be right. I don't know enough about how IMAP works - it's it all server-side push, or is there an element of client-side polling?

Either way the current IMAP functioanlity is FUBAR. :roll:

[encece]

I dont know anything about it either...I was just speaking theoretically.

[brianchris]

Although my wife owns an MPx200, I don't have an MS Smartphone yet (waiting to pounce on either the MPx 100 or 220), so I haven't used IMAP features yet, but I can tell you Send & Recieve, read / reply / delete email, then Send & Recieve again is a bit teadious......made worse by people apparently following that procedure and it still not working!

One thought I had, and I'll be the first to admit its a backwards solution, but have you considered moving your Thoughts email infrastructure to a hosted Echange 2003 solution? Granted it would be a big move, but you yourself admitted it Exchange / Smartphone work perfectly together. IMAP on the MS Smartphones should work, but given that it doesn't, desperate times call for desperate measures?