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Follow UsHitesh Raj Bhagat
As the mobile phone evolves into a multi-faceted business tool, e-mail has become one of the most sought after services. In fact, several business professionals even prefer to do all their emailing using a mobile device rather than a PC or a laptop. The main advantage here is extreme mobility, since you carry your cellphone everywhere and e-mail access to all your accounts from anywhere using GPRS/EDGE or Wi-Fi. With the modern cellphone capable of handling multiple e-mail accounts and attachments without any worry of storage space – e-mail on your mobile is here to stay. Read on to find out all you need to know about handsets, popular e-mail services and even free alternatives to push e-mail services on your mobile.
BlackBerry
Probably the most heard about e-mail service for mobile phones is BlackBerry. BlackBerry is a push email service developed by an Ontario-based company called Research In Motion (RIM). The main advantage of push mail is that all your email is instantly 'pushed' or delivered right to your mobile device as soon as it is received without you having to connect to the internet or without sighing in to an e-mail inbox. BlackBerry also offers complete integration into an organization's existing e-mail system using a software package called BlackBerry Enterprise Server. Data plans are usually lower for the BlackBerry Enterprise services. As far as handsets go, there are several available - you can choose to go with a RIM handset or a compatible one. The prices for RIM handsets remain the same whichever operator you choose.
In India, BlackBerry is available from Hutch and Airtel (each offers the service in a limited number of cities, mostly A & B cities). For personal use, Hutch charges Rs 499 per month with a 500 KB download limit or Rs 1099 a month for unlimited data usage. For corporates, BlackBerry Enterprise Plus can be had for Rs 899 a month with unlimited data usage.
Airtel charges Rs 499 a month for Enterprise Services with a 500 KB data limit or Rs 899 for an unlimited plan. There are also three plans for personal use; Rs 249 a month with all data charged at Rs 0.15 per KB, Rs 499 a month with a limit of 500 KB and Rs 1099 for an unlimited plan. Exceeding the data limit in the data limited plans incurs a charge of Rs 0.50 per KB. Therefore, if you expect to be sending and receiving a lot of mail, its better to go for one of the unlimited plans.
RIM also offers a slightly stripped-down version of the BlackBerry Wireless Platform for some other phones if you prefer not to use one of the RIM devices. Available as a small software download called BlackBerry Connect, it offers all the key functionalities of BlackBerry without sacrificing the identity of the compatible device. Some phones that support BlackBerry Connect include the Sony Ericsson P910i, P990i, M600i, W950i, Nokia 9300, 9300i, 9500, E50, E60, E61, E70, Treo 650 and many Windows Mobile-based Pocket PCs or Smartphones. BlackBerry Connect itself is available as a free download, but you'll still have to pay the usual data charges. You can get the BlackBerry Connect software for your Nokia phone by going to http://www.businesssoftware.nokia.com/blackberry_downloads.php
BlackBerry Connect can also be downloaded from the provider websites; http://hutch.in/blackberryconnect/software.htm (for Hutch) and http://www.airtelworld.com/blackberry (for Airtel).
BlackBerry phones
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8800 – Rs 31,990 Quad-band GSM with EGGE, GPS with BlackBerry Maps, full QWERTY, Bluetooth, media player, MicroSD slot |
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7130g – Rs 14,990 - Quad band GSM with EDGE, Sure-type keyboard (two letters to one key), Bluetooth, 64MB memory |
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8700g – Rs 29,990 – Quad-band GSM with EDGE, full QWERTY, Bluetooth, mp3 ringtones, 64MB memory |
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8100 – Rs 24,990 - Quad band GSM with EDGE, Sure-type keyboard (two letters to one key), Bluetooth, media player, 1.3 megapixel camera, MicroSD slot |
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7290 (only Hutch) – Rs 19,490 – Quad-band GSM, full QWERTY, 32MB memory |
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7100g (only Airtel) – Rs 10,999 - Quad band GSM, Sure-type keyboard (two letters to one key), Bluetooth, 32MB memory |
| Other Services
There are other options too. Flurry (www.flurry.com) is a free application available for many phones that allows multiple e-mail accounts, news, blogs, RSS feeds and attachments. They also compress data while sending to minimize GPRS/EDGE usage costs. Consilient Push (www.consilient.com) offers up to 5 e-mail accounts on one phone with a push service just like BlackBerry. Its free (ad-supported) and you only need to pay your operator for the usual GPRS/EDGE data costs. Emoze (www.emoze.com) offers free push email as well, but they claim to be 'real' push e-mail where synchronization between your e-mail inbox and mobile device happens instantaneously and not just by periodical checks. |
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| Top Pick Gmail app for mobilesThe Gmail app is a small, Java-based app available for download from www.gmail. com/app. Since it's Java-based, a wide variety of mobile devices are supported. It's our top pick because its free, provided by Google itself (no third party involved), fast (it pre-loads messages), easy to use, supports attachments, has keyboard shortcuts and gives you all the functionalities of your Gmail account. From your phone, just visit the link and it automatically detects and offers the correct version for your phone. Google Talk is also available, though currently only for the newer RIM BlackBerry phones. (http:// www.blackberry.com/GoogleTalk/). They will probably extend support for other devices very soon. |
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| POP3 / IMAP settings for Gmail 1 First, click 'Settings' at the top of any Gmail page on your PC. 2 Click 'Forwarding' and POP in the Mail Settings box. 3 Select 'Enable POP' for all mail or 'Enable POP' for mail that arrives from now on (as you prefer) 4 Use 'pop.gmail.com' as the POP3 server and 'smtp.gmail.com' as the outgoing mail (SMTP) server. 5 Use SSL (Secure Socket Layer) and port 995 if asked for POP3. 6 Use SSL (Secure Socket Layer) and port 465 if asked for SMTP (with authentication). POP3 / IMAP settings for Yahoo Mail |
Nokia Settings Wizard
Several new Nokia phones (especially Series 40 and Series 60 3rd edition phones) have an e-mail settings wizard built in. To access it, in the menu, go to tools and you'll see the Settings Wizard app. When you start the app for the first time, it'll ask for your country and service provider. Once that's done, it can automatically configure e-mail settings for many e-mail providers like Yahoo, Gmail, AOL, Hotmail, Lycos Mail, Rediffmail, Satyam and VSNL. Once you define the mailbox and add your username and password, the mailbox gets added automatically to the messaging application of the phone.
Source: Living Digital