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When is the iPhone going to support generic IMAP push mail?
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And yes... you need either an exchange account, iPhone has or you need a BB/RIMM server..... apple has mobile me. Sorry.... So.... if you have an exchange account set it up. If you have a website that lets you have an exchange account set that up. Sorry it the iPhone can do this with the right equipment.... same goes for BB..
And really, is the OP a troll??? Two posts...
Of course apple run their applications in the background. But Apple's mail application that they wrote did not add support for IMAP IDLE because it requires a connection to the IMAP server all the time (not every 15 minutes as one person above think that how IDLE work).
I had an iPhone 2G on launch and then iPhone 3G until last week. I now have a Palm Pre. I love the iPhone but lack of IMAP got annoying.
Just so you know it's not some voodoo/magic to accomplish, the Palm Pre supports IMAP (with IDLE) out of box for any IMAP account. I now get reliable push Yahoo, Gmail and my own IMAP mail. Battery life is better since the phone is not constantly checking for email and only gets email when there's new email.
I know push email is not important for many people but it's irritating that being on 3.0 the iPhone still doesn't support a basic feature that most smartphones support and have supported for quite a while.
Hopefully they'll add it soon because once you have it, you get spoilt!
Just so you know it's not some voodoo/magic to accomplish, the Palm Pre supports IMAP (with IDLE) out of box for any IMAP account. I now get reliable push Yahoo, Gmail and my own IMAP mail. Battery life is better since the phone is not constantly checking for email and only gets email when there's new email.
I know push email is not important for many people but it's irritating that being on 3.0 the iPhone still doesn't support a basic feature that most smartphones support and have supported for quite a while.
Hopefully they'll add it soon because once you have it, you get spoilt!
You probably just mispoke, but the iPhone has always supported IMAP.
IMAP IDLE requires a persistent connection per account. It is not more efficient than a 15 minute fetch, especially with multiple accounts.
I know push email is not important for many people but it's irritating that being on 3.0 the iPhone still doesn't support a basic feature that most smartphones support and have supported for quite a while.
Hopefully they'll add it soon because once you have it, you get spoilt!
The iPhone does support push email through Exchange, MobileMe, and Yahoo.
Yes I mispoke, I meant IMAP Idle. Push email for Yahoo on iPhone is not IMAP IDLE and for me over the last 2 years has always been very unreliable. Maybe I was just unlucky.
Also your point about battery life is inaccurate...do some research. IMAP IDLE does require a persistent connection but that takes less juice than checking often. i.e. If you get one email after 2 hours during those 2 hours all your phone is doing is maintaining the connection (takes very little power). If you have an iPhone with GMail, it's checking every 15 mins for email no matter if there's any email waiting. This takes way more battery life.
Many users with Pre have tried both 15 min checking and IMAP IDLE and IMAP IDLE has significantly better battery life.
What would be needed in order to get a RIM-like setup on the iPhone? It seems to me that a lot would need to be done in order to get that to happen. Would your e-mail provider need to establish a similar setup (RIM)? It seems as if Apple would need to make changes to its OS in order for this to work. Could these e-mail providers make use of the existing push notification service?
The only reason I don't use push e-mail on my phone is because I take such a HUGE hit in battery life. I'm hoping for a low-power e-mail solution in the near future.
The only reason I don't use push e-mail on my phone is because I take such a HUGE hit in battery life. I'm hoping for a low-power e-mail solution in the near future.
Also your point about battery life is inaccurate...do some research. IMAP IDLE does require a persistent connection but that takes less juice than checking often. i.e. If you get one email after 2 hours during those 2 hours all your phone is doing is maintaining the connection (takes very little power). If you have an iPhone with GMail, it's checking every 15 mins for email no matter if there's any email waiting. This takes way more battery life.
Many users with Pre have tried both 15 min checking and IMAP IDLE and IMAP IDLE has significantly better battery life.
In the situation that you describe, you may be right. But I don't think that one email every 2 hours sitting on the same network is real world usage for someone who depends on push email. More likely, they are receiving messages more often than every 15 minutes. They are also moving in and out of coverage areas and wifi networks, which require reestablishing the connection.
Apple will have to update their mail app with the ability to receive the push notifications from their server for IMAP accounts and along with a application that the administrator install a application on the IMAP server to send a push notification to apple's push server that there is new email on the user's IMAP server.
That would just be my guess of what would need to happen.
What will it take for push GMail on the iPhone? One of four eventualities:
1) Apple introduce IMAP IDLE support for mail.app
2) Google adds GMail support to Google Mobile sync (i.e. via MS Exchange)
3) Apple and Google work together to support P-IMAP similar to yahoo mail.
4) A third party solution steps in such as nuevasync creating an exchange front-end.
Take your pick what you think will be the most likely
1) Apple introduce IMAP IDLE support for mail.app
2) Google adds GMail support to Google Mobile sync (i.e. via MS Exchange)
3) Apple and Google work together to support P-IMAP similar to yahoo mail.
4) A third party solution steps in such as nuevasync creating an exchange front-end.
Take your pick what you think will be the most likely
If you use gmail, just use the gmail filter rules to autofoward mail to a free (e.g., yahoo) or non-free (e.g., MobileMe) account. The idea here is to still use gmail for normal reading/writing of email, but use the push email account as a "you have mail" alarm.
A big advantage of this is you can use gmail's filters to give you "selective push" -- that is, only mail that you consider to be important will be "pushed" and interrupt you. This is great if you get a lot of mail, and don't want to be bothered by a constant stream of interruptions. Also, less push == better battery life.
The downside is that you periodically have to go into the push mail account and do a "delete all".
Frankly, I would not want to use a push email account that only did 100% push of all email. I get too much email for that.
my gmail always arrives in a few minutes, sometimes before my mail.app. I was concerned about the lack of push gmail last year, but it hasn't really been a problem for me.
We're talking about a small organisation where (A) Exchange is absolutely not feasible, (B) baring in mind this is Mac forum, many people wish not to be paying any more money to Microsoft than they have to, and (C) many would hope the same email functionality with regard to at-the-moment notifications of Blackberries was replicated with the iPhone.
Personally I have a setup that pushes my gmail account to my iphone right now. What I do is have my gmail forward to a mobile me account, which my phone obviously picks up as push. Then, I set the outgoing SMTP server as the gmail server, and it sends my mail back out via my @gmail.com address instead of mobileme. It costs extra, since you have to pay for mobileme, but works perfectly
Exactly. The reality is that the iPhone still lacks some features (push email does come to mind) but the iPhone's (still) plethora of features more than makes up for it. Add that to an unmatched experience and superb support and you have the best phone out. Period.
And on top o it all, you can count on Apple to eventually implement push