There are several ways to get, send and read email on Maemo devices such as the N900.
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N900 Email Client
The default Email Client on the N900 is Modest
Modest was presented at the Maemo Summit 2009. The slides are available on the Modest website
The N900 includes a setup wizard that helps you to set up your email account. Please make sure that you select the correct service provider. DO NOT SELECT "OTHER"until you have scrolled through the service provider list (this is not obvious) in the wizard to see if your provider is already there. You will see a long list of providers starting with :-
- Other
- Mail for Exchange (for connecting to Exchange servers only)
- Nokia Messaging (If you want push email from your provider)
- .MAC
- 3Mail (three.co.uk)
- AIM
- AOL
- Beeb.net
- Bluyonder
- Breathe
- BT Click
- BT OpenWorld
- BT Yahoo
- Clara.net
- demon
- Force9
.......
0000000000000000000
Desktop style e-mail using the Modest e-mail client
Some people want to be able to have a copy of all their e-mails local to their device, just like Outlook or Lotus notes. If your e-mail service provider provides POP or IMAP support (which they all should) then the N900 has a very good email client called Modest. Modest currently seems to have problems dealing with very large inboxes such is typical with Gmail accounts, as it will try and copy all of your mails to the device. There is a guide to improving Modest email sync reliability
The N900 includes a large number of popular email providers server addresses. make sure that you scroll down the list of service providers in the setup wizard and choose the one you need, to save you having to find out your service providers information.
Secure IMAP Email
users have reported success using IMAPS over SSL. make sure your digital certificates are installed.
see thread here http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php?t=37078&highlight=certificate
Gmail and IMAP access
Gmail does not offer IMAP Access by default it needs to be switched on. There is a good Article of IMAP vs POP here http://gmailblog.blogspot.com/2008/05/getting-gmail-anywhere-imap-versus-pop.html
And Instructions on Turning on IMAP http://mail.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=77695&topic=12891
If you enable Google Labs on your Gmail account you can select which folders (labels) are visible through IMAP. This can significantly reduce your data usage and the time it takes to send and receive (down to a few seconds on 2G if you only want to see new emails and a few others such as "Starred" emails).
Yahoo! Mail and IMAP
Yahoo supports IMAP access. However, you need to setup your account with a GPRS or 3G connection. After that, you can access your mailbox via wifi connection
Here are the settings
- Account Title: <Whatever you like>
- Name: <Your Name>
- Username: <Full email address (e.g., bill@yahoo.com)>
- Password: <Is the password you login to Yahoo! with>
- E-mail address: <Full email address (e.g., bill@yahoo.com)>
- Incoming Server: imap.mail.yahoo.com
- Secure authentication: Tick
- Secure connection: SSL
- Incoming Port: 993 (requires SSL)
- Outgoing Server: smtp.mail.yahoo.com
- Secure authentication: Login
- Username: <Full email address (e.g., bill@yahoo.com)>
- Password: <Is the password you login to Yahoo! with>
- Secure connection: SSL
- Outgoing Port: 465 (requires SSL)
Webmail
The Browser in the N900 is very powerful and supports most webmail services including GMail and Hotmail.
Note: Some webmail services default to a mobile view, when using MicroB (N900's default browser). In order to view these sites, as though using a desktop, it is necessary to alter the User Agent String (UA). A User Agent String, User Agent or UA is the name (i.e. a string) that a browser calls itself when connecting to a website. One such tool to change MicroB's UA is User Agent Tool Discussion and Package . Altering the User Agent does not alter the browser, it merely changes the way the browser reports itself to websites; expect sites to load more slowly when using an alternate UA.
Gmail
You can access a Internet tablet friendly version of Gmail by pointing your browser at http://mail.google.com/mail/x/gdlakb-/gp/
Hopefully a version of macuco will be ported to the N900 from the N810 that gives you finger friendly access to the gmail site.
Google wave has also been tried, and appears to work to some degree. You may need to use the Onscreen Cursor to get to some of the UI elements.
Hotmail
The mobile page for Windows Live Services (including Hotmail) is http://mobile.live.com . Although the page is intended for mobile users, it is not very tablet friendly. For example, the font size is too small for a Hi-res screen (like N900).
For the Modest client, Hotmail does not offer IMAP access. It only offers POP3 access. The user experience is not very good as a result. For instance deleting emails on your device doe not delete on your server. The best option for Hotmail is to use Nokia Messaging.
Yahoo mail
Yahoo Mail provides a mobile phone friendly version. http://m.yahoo.com/mail
Yahoo Mail also supports IMAP access. See above
In addition, you can push your Yahoo mails to your devices using Nokia Messaging.
If you use Yahoo Mail Plus!, you can have POP3. The settings can be found in the setup wizard.
Ovimail
Nokia provides its own webmail service designed to work with your mobile. create an account here https://mail.ovi.com/ Users have reported success combining Ovi mail with Nokia Messaging to get push email.
Lotus Web Mail
The Domino Web access's default user interface requires using double click, which per default used for zooming in the browser. The Domino offers another Light weight web user interfaces via the bellow urls.
http://<server.domain>/<mailfile path>/?OpenDatabase&ui=dwa_ulite
http://<server.domain>/<mailfile path>/?OpenDatabase&ui=webmail
Please add services that you have tried
Third Party Email options
Please add your experience with other email options here
Users have reported success with Nuevasync. This service allows you to sync from various sources including any IMAP server, Google mail, contacts and calendar, and also Yahoo contacts, with your N900.
Lotus Domino (Notes)
The backend for Notes is called Domino Server. Domino 8.5.1 was released in October 2009 and added an optional software module called Lotus Notes Traveler. This module implements ActiveSync.
In theory the Mail for Exchange (MfE) application should work against Lotus Notes Traveler. However it does not, because the Lotus Notes Traveler implements the ActiveSync on non-standard path and there seems to be version incompatibilities between the Maemo version of MfE and the Lotus Notes Traveler.
There is no support for using MfE against a Lotus Notes Traveler server.
- Correction, it will work, albeit unsupported... you can change the
NTSConfigTemplate.xml file in the .../notesdata/traveler/cfg/ directory to turn off policy enforcing and use a non-standard path.
Search for my post for instructions on talk.maemo.org (cotoole)
Additional Resources
Nokia Messaging options website http://messaging.nokia.com/site/main.do