Push Email solutions - the definitive review roundup!

[slitchfield]

Guest writer Zach Epstein weighs in with a very comprehensive real world test of five native S60 push email solutions: System SEVEN, Mail for Exchange, RoadSync, MailX and emoze. He covers installation, setup, performance and reliability for each, before picking an overall winner.

Read on in the full article.

[Nick17]

Maybe you should try the "real" Seven-version.

At the alwaysonmail-website you can
still trial the AOMIE (AlwaysOnMailInternetEdition)-version and this is my opinion still the best.

It uses more RAM than MailX, but it delivers the whole mail (also HTML (stripped)) and attachments (indicators above 15k or how much you set it to (for download)).

I am a heavy E-mail-user and AOMIE did not drain the battery on my N80 or now on the N95. It uses approximately 6MB per months for delivering all mails (20-50/day).

Check it out.

[Mobilix]

OneBridge from Extensys/Sybase iAnywhere works on many devices - S80, S60/OS9 but also Palm/Windows Mobile. We use it on a 9300i in connection with Lotus Notes, Exchange is also possible.

Ciao
Mobilix

[fidolatry]

Interesting that the free BlackBerry Connect software wasn't included here!

Though with its inability to handle email attachments I can certainly see why...

You forgot to try the cheapest but IMHO very good IMAP-Idle !!

The review doesn't talk about functionality regarding corporate addressbooks or selecting contacts from list off the server. This cannot be called a strict criteria for push email clients but it should centainly factor in the useability of the app.

Roadsync had this feature since the very begining, MfE introduced it only in its most recent version. Some other solutions expect the user to type in correct email ids without a lookup option.

[hemuni]

I have been using emoze for about a month, with my gmail account and its working just perfect. Very easy setup, configuration and use and no need for any exchange account, it works directly with gmail.

It ads a signature advertising the app to outgoing mails, but i just use the normal mail app for sending mails instead.

I love that it starts up automaticly and just goes on with its buisness without any bother - i just works! and I see absolutly no need to try out any alternative.

Higly recomended from here

[epo.fm]

Yeh, I'm not sure I get the need for these...
Connecting to a decent email provider like fastmail.fm with the built in email client, seems to give me perfect push email via Imap Idle.

Some business users require tasks sync and search for their emails appart from email and calendar.
Only Nokia application (the latest one) supports.

Also the version 2.0 of Nokia application has A LOT better battery handling on my nokia E61.

[hermida]

I agree that BB connect should be reviewed too. We can summarize it:

PROS (BIS version):
very fast push (probably the faster)
relatively secure
small battery drain
smallest data usage
server side filters
works in other networks (roaming) without configuration changes

CONS:
no sending or saving attachments
no image attachments viewing in BB connect < 4.0
bb service required from your carrier
high RAM usage (~4MB)


And the other solution that should be included is Nokia Intellisync wireless email. I've heard a lot from this service though I was not able to test it yet. There are two carriers here that offer intellisync service and I will the service probably next week.

[mjlaris]

I use both emoze and Mail for Exchange. I have an email account with mail2web and use M4E to get my personal email and sync my calendar, todos, and contacts. I use emoze to get my work email using the pc connector. Both applications work well but M4E is more seemless. I never have to do anything with it and my email is always just there. With emoze I also found the location of the inbox confusing at first but got used to it and it has been corrected on the version released a few days abo. However, there is one very anoying bug that emoze has not been able to resolve. I have both emoze and M4E configured to use GPRS/EDGE so that I don't have to constantly change change access points as I move in and out of them. This works fine with M4E but with emoze, when I'm connected to a wifi access point, as I often am as I use mVoIP extensively, every time it tryes to connect (I have it set for 15 minute intervals) it issues a warning message that "all other applications connected to the internet will be disconnected" and it will not connect until I respond with an ok to this message. Then when it connects, it momentarily disconnects my wifi connections, causing me to lose my VoIP registrations.

[Zach]

Thanks everyone for your great comments!

Nick17

I used to use AOM but I've omitted it from this review only because I've received word that once System SEVEN is out of beta it will be phased out over time (I don't have a time frame). I don't know if all regions/carriers will be affected by these changes.

fidolatry || hermida

I gave serious consideration to adding BB Connect to the review but decided to omit it for several reasons. Among them are lack of outgoing attachment support as you've mentioned (this renders the app unusable IMO) and the requirement for a BES server. As this review is geared towards personal use and not corporate use, BES is too expensive for the common personal user.

One additional note on BB Connect: In my testing I found emoze to be faster than BB Connect in just about every test. Much faster in fact!


With regards to 'pushing' with IMAP idle, this is most definitely a viable option for IMAP users or along with a good IMAP host that you can forward your personal mail to. It is a bit annoying that only automatic header download is supported (like MailX) but I do use this setup for another one of my email accounts and it's pretty reliable.

[hermida]

For me BB connect was way faster than emoze and I'm using with BlackBerry Internet Service (BIS) which is way cheaper than BES and is available in most carries to regular people that are not big enterprises that can pay for BES.

And yes no attachments killed BB connect that's why I'm using M4E and I can barely wait to get Intellisync.

Please correct me if I am wrong but as far as I know unlike other push e-mail solutions BB does not constantly check whether you have received an e-mail, in other words does not constantly establish data connection, and thus saves far much more battery in comparison to other push e-mail solutions.

If this is the fact, then BB would surpass all other solutions in all respects if it could open attachments.

Just a quick note: The writer of this article is mistaken about the minimum retrieval time that you can select in the built-in e-mail client of Nokia devices. He says that you can retrieve e-mails at most every 30 minutes. I do not know how it works in other Nokia devices and previous firmwares of N95 but I can set this selection to every 5 minutes, which, IMO, can be deemed (almost) push e-mail. In fact it is not even "almost", because the built-in e-mail client, each time it establishes connection, stays connected for 5 minutes regardless of the automatic retrieval selection. So if you select 30 minutes retrieval, then every 30 minutes the client will establish connection and such connection will stay for 5 minutes. What happens when you select 5 minute retrieval is that the client establishes connection for 5 minutes and then it waits for 1 minute idle and afterwards it re-establishes connection for 5 minutes and it goes on like this. So who wouldn't consider "1 minute of non-function every 5 minutes" as push e-mail? No one would...

But the thing is the built-in e-mail client of Nokia, when it is set to every 5 minutes retrieval, is extremely power hungry, at least for the crappy battery of the N95.

PS. Special thanks to the commenter who shared the glitch of emoze when it is used with VoIP simultaneously!!

[chilko]

yes, IMAP-Idle is very useful