Push Email

I am very interested in the schedule for push email. Can you give us any insight on this?

This should probably be in the new features section, but i too am interested in any information related to a timeframe for PUSH email via the gateway to IMAP listed as an upcoming feature. Thanks to the dev team and keep up the good work.

We don't have a firm date for e-mail sync yet but it'll be the next major feature to be released.
Work has been underway on this feature since last summer.

hopefully they release this function soon... it'd be the reason for me to start using nuevasync...

I'm just cureous: Since IMAP keeps email in sync everywhere automatically by definition, why do people want an email syncing feature in Nuevasync? Is this just for those few people who only have POP? Personally, I would use IMAP, and even switch to a service provider that offers it if neccessary, before I'd ever go looking for a way to sync up POP. But that's just me. I'm cureous what those who want this think. Thanks.

iamp does keep all your emails in sync, but the impression im under is that using a push service will give you near instantaneous notification that an email has been received, imap still needs to be polled (checked) before you know you have a new email.

Most email client programs will tell you when you receive new, unread IMAP messages, same as with POP, only better. My iPhone shows how many new (unread) messages there are in my inbox in the email icon on the desktop (or tray), at any given time. And when I open the mail app, I can see which messages are new because they are marked as unread. (Some email clients such as Thunderbird, will also let you manually mark messages as read or unread if you want, however the iPhone mail app doesn't seem to do this.) If I read a message on my desktop computer, it gets marked as "read", and then on my iphone there will be one fewer new (unread) messages showing in the Mail icon. The same in reverse, if I read a message on my iPhone, there will be one fewer message showing as new on my desktop. Also, messages I send from either location are saved in the sent box, which shows in both locations. POP doesn't do that.

With IMAP, new messages are marked as un-read by default when they first arrive in your Inbox (in a flag in the header of the message itself). When you read a message (from anywhere, your phone, your computer, etc.) it stays in your inbox but gets marked as having been read, so that no matter where else you check email from later, messages you've already read show as having already been read.

You can also automatically or manually move older messages into an "old messages" folder. This can be done automatically on the server side via IMAP filters that reside on the server, or you can to it automatically or manually in one of your email clients.

I actually have many old message folders. I have every message I've ever sent and received since 1994, saved on my IMAP server in separate "old sent" and "old inbox" folders. One folder for each year. So when I check my messages, only the last 60 days or so of messages are still in my main inbox, and only the ones I have not read yet (from anywhere) show as new. But I can still get to the older messages when I need to by navigating to one of the other folders other than the main inbox. This works in the iPhone's mail app just fine.

Also, you might think having all my messages takes up a lot of space on the server but no, not with today's storage sizes. My ISP gives me over a Terrabyte of storage on my account and the amount taken up by email is just 11 megabytes so far. (That's for 15 years of mail!)

With POP you don't have access to the sub folders. Mail you check from one place gets downloaded and deleted from the server, unless you tell it "leave mail on the server for X number of days". Mail you send from one place is not left on the server at all, so you can't see sent mail from the other places you check your mail.

This message was edited 3 times. Last update was at 5 Apr 2009 10:57 PDT

i vaguely know how imap works but....

you are not getting my point .......... with regular imap you have to load a client to get/check new email with push the phone will tell you when you have new email.......

so instead of having the phone fetch data every 30mins which could be wasteful to the battery if you dont get that many emails your phone will be told when there is a new email waiting for you....

now im not a tech head and cant pretend to know how the nuevasync guys are going to work this push service but im guessing it will be bridge our existing imap mail somehow, in other words our email will still be imap so when you read somethign on ur phone it will show up as read on ur computer at home its just the notification that will change.

You don't have to load the client. As I said in my previous message, the phone tells you you have new mail in the Mail icon in the tray or desktop of your phone. The same thing happens when I have new voicemail. No need to load phone app to see that either.

Perhaps, in addition to seeing that you have new mail in the Mail icon, with POP, you are also getting a notification of new mail in an additional on-screen message. (Since I don't use POP I am not aware of that.) If so then that on-screen message would be the one thing you would miss if you used IMAP.

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 5 Apr 2009 10:57 PDT

imap has to FETCH new emails, ok the programme doesnt have to be active but it checks at predetermined intervals PUSH negates this because you do not need to FETCH

can someone else jump in here, im goin in circles with this fella

When a cellphone talks to its IMAP server, they should sync perfectly. But a typical cellphone only talks to its IMAP server at times specified by the cellphone, which isn't efficient in terms of cellphone battery power as sometimes there aren't any messages to receive so the power-up is wasted, and with long pwer-up spacings a burst of messages may arrive together which isn't good for the user. Far better that the IMAP server informs by cellphone if and when an email arrives, and the cellphone then fully powers up to receive it. This last bit is what push email does. Hence battery life for a cellphone on a purpose-built email-pushing system such as Blackberry is almost eternal when there are no messages. This is what we want from NuevaSync!

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 5 Apr 2009 19:36 PDT

Thanks for the clarification. Those last two emails answered my question completely! I did not mean to start a ruckus... I hope I am not doing so by asking one final question: How would push email work with IMAP? Would we be able to keep the iPhone client from fetching when there is not any new email to fetch?

This message was edited 3 times. Last update was at 6 Apr 2009 04:41 PDT

flewis wrote:Thanks for the clarification. Those last two emails answered my question completely! I did not mean to start a ruckus... I hope I am not doing so by asking one final question: How would push email work with IMAP? Would we be able to keep the iPhone client from fetching when there is not any new email to fetch?

The dfference is this:

POP - POP email clients check for new mail at specified intervals (15m to a few hours). Once the emails are downloaded, they are erased from the server (except in the case of Google Mail, where they are usually archived). As a result, once you've read a mail through POP on one computer, you won't be able to view it on another.

IMAP - IMAP clients, like POP clients, check at specified intervals for new mails. However, unlike POP, everything is still stored on the server rather than being downloaded locally, meaning that you can use the account with multiple computers and everything stays "in sync".

Push IMAP - Push email differs from the two above because instead of the client checking for new mail at specified intervals, the mail server sends a message to the client telling it that new mail has arrived. As a result, the client (in this case your phone) is spared from performing regular checks when no mail has arrived.

Hope this helps.

Thanks, hitman12. Excellent explanation. Push IMAP sounds like the way to go!

What some people are calling 'Push IMAP' is really just...'IMAP'

There's an IMAP operation called 'IDLE' that allows the server to notify the client that there are new messages.
Most desktop IMAP clients (e.g. Thunderbird) support IDLE, as do most IMAP servers.

Unfortunately most mobile devices have IMAP clients that either plain don't support IDLE, or they do but don't really work in the field over cell data networks.

Syncing e-mail gives the owners of those devices the experience they want (if there's mail, it should be on the phone already).

Here are a couple of references that may be helpful:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Push_e-mail

http://blogs.sun.com/chienr/entry/iphone_and_imap_idle_part