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

[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:mitchwaite@earthlink.net
pop: myemail.t-mobile.com
smtp: myemail.t-mobile.com
email: mitchwaite@earthlink.net

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...