For those of you who may be wondering what I was doing over the past few days, I was setting up my N82 to access the internet via my new provider. Many of you might say, come on, accessing internet on handsets isn’t new at all. Yes, provided that you’re not living in Iran. Here the main provider doesn’t offer internet or GPRS, to be more specific. However, a newly born provider does, and I can’t say how fabulous the experience has been in spite of the fact that the speed I’m getting is a bit faster than a K56 dial-up connection. No HSDPA whatsoever. But it’s a revolution in its own rights.
At any rate, one of the things I’ve accomplished is setting up the email client on the N82. Now I can easily send and receive email messages. For whatever it is worth, I’m using Gmail, because compared with other big names like Yahoo! it offers IMAP4, and it allows me to handle messages in a more efficient way. For instance, if I read a message on my N82, it also appears on my computer as “Read”. If I move it to a different folder on my computer, it also moves to the same folder on the phone. Also, IMAP4 allows me to store messages on the server if I wish.
To make the situation even more interesting, I’ve also used Gmail’s exciting feature which allows me to send and receive messages that belong to other accounts without even touching those accounts, and I’m taking advantage of that to work with my Comcast account. Just notice that all of this is taking place on my N82, courtesy of the GPRS service!
At any rate, if you also have a Gmail account and would like to set up your Nokia handset to access Gmail, follow these steps.
- First thing first: enable IMAP in your Gmail account settings. Simply log in to your account, go to settings and select “Forwarding and POP/IMAP” to do it. Having done so, sign out of Gmail.
- On your cell phone, select “Messaging” > “Options” > “Settings” > “E-mail” > “Mailboxes.”
- If you have never set up email on your phone before, select “Yes” to define a new mailbox. If you already have other mailboxes, select “Options” and then “New mailbox.”
- Select “Start” to begin the setup wizard.
- Select “IMAP4″ and then “Next.”
- Enter your Gmail username (including “@gmail.com”) as the email address and select “Next.”
- Enter “imap.gmail.com” as the incoming mail server and select “Next.”
- Enter “smtp.gmail.com” as the outgoing mail server and select “Next.”
- Select the appropriate access point and then “Next.” Here mine has been set to “Irancell GPRS.”
- Enter a descriptive name for the email account mailbox name. I’ve used “Gmail” for mine.
- Once your mailbox is set up, select it from the email mailbox settings screen.
- Select “Connection settings” > “Incoming e-mail.”
- Enter your Gmail username (including “@gmail.com”) and password.
- Select “SSL/TLS” for your security (ports) and define your port as “993.”
- Select “Back.”
- Select “Outgoing e-mail.”
- Enter your Gmail username (including “@gmail.com”) and password.
- Select “StartTLS” for your security (ports) and define your port as “587.”
- Select “Back” and change any other settings according to your preferences.
Congratulations! You can now read and write email on the go! Just notice that the Nokia email client offers you more settings for you to modify. For instance, you can opt to write a signature which would be added to the end of your outgoing messages. Also, as you’re using IMAP4, you can subscribe to other folders other than Inbox. By default, your phone only downloads messages which arrive in the Inbox folder. If you want to also view the contents of other folders, go to “Email settings”, select “Retrieval settings”, and select “Folder subscriptions.” Finally, in my opinion the nicest point about mobile access to email via Nokia’s email client is that by default just email headers are downloaded, meaning you control which email to open and which one to delete without having to download the whole message first.
If you have set up Gmail or other similar services on your S60 device, I’d be interested in knowing your comments and discovered tweaks.
