Hello all.
I own an HTC Fuze and I'm crazy about it. I'm really glad I decided to go with it over an iPhone.
I have two e-mail accounts, both of which I access via a webmail interface because I don't like having my e-mails downloaded onto a computer. I'd much rather be able to access them anywhere, and have the protected in case of a computer crash. In addition to accessing my e-mail via web interface, I also like to have my phone check for new e-mails and download them (without deleting them from the e-mail server). That way if I'm away from a computer I can have access to all my e-mails, but those same e-mails are still sitting safely on the e-mail server.
My primary e-mail is a premium membership Yahoo account. My secondary e-mail, which a very distant second in importance and frankly I could live without, is through a private web hosting company that I have a website on.
I set up my Fuze to access both of those e-mail accounts using the e-mail client that comes installed on it. Initially I set up both accounts to be checked for new e-mails every 30 minutes. The problem is, with two e-mail accounts being checked every half hour each, the drain on the device's battery life is considerable (I have the e-mail client set to download all e-mails in their entirety including attachments).
Is there a way (via a different set-up option, a 3rd-party e-mail client, or whatever) that I can have my two e-mail servers notify my phone when there is pending e-mail rather than have my phone constantly reaching out and checking for e-mail that might not even be there and draining down my battery?
On a semi-related note, the area I live in for some reason does not yet have 3G. A town about 8 miles from here has 3G, so I assume it's "coming soon." So another side effect of the way my e-mail is set up is that if someone tries to call me while my phone is checking for e-mails they get shunted right to voice mail and I miss the call.
Thanks in advance for any advice.
Jamie
Jamie,
I'm pretty much in the same situation as you (2 accounts, battery drain, 3G coming soon). The only solution I found was a combination of :
1) Primary email account to be checked frequently (5 mins - 10 mins interval)
2) Secondary email account to be checked once a day (or perhaps every 4 hours)
3) Charge often (I have a USB cable connected at my office desk), ignoring effect on battery life
4) Manually turn off email checking (or reduce frequency) during the night and weekends, so as to get freedom from charging
The problem is bad, and I'm seriously considering getting a cheap blackberry to handle emails (especially primary account) and leaving my Fuze/Touch Pro to be my main phone/messaging/surfing device.
On the other issue, I don't face that problem. If a call comes in while my phone is checking email, the data connection is dropped and instead the voice call comes through. The difference though, is that I don't have any voice mail...
Hope that helps.
CUGWMUI
I have been using a program called Seven ( www.seven.com ) to take care of e-mails. It is a program that pushes your e-mails to your mobile outlook. I use it with gmail although yahoo also appears to be supported. From what I understand, maintaining a constant data connection with push is actually less battery intensive and uses less data than signing on every 15 minutes or so to do a scheduled check.
I used to use IMAP instead of POP with gmail and that took care of the problem of e-mails getting taken off the server. I believe that Seven uses IMAP as well because its function seems to be the same. Any e-mails I read on the phone are marked as read on the server and vice versa. I believe you can set it to not delete from the server if you delete an e-mail on the phone, but I honestly do not delete e-mails from my phone. On its own and also with Seven, Pocket Outlook can be set to only show e-mails from a certain number of days. I have mine set to 5 days. Any e-mails from before that simply do not show up on the phone. As a result, you never have to worry about cleaning up your inbox on the phone. At least, I don't have to, but if you have an extreme volume of e-mail, you may have to even if you only have it set to 5 days.
Also you can set Seven to stop pushing at night or on weekend days as well. My Fuze is on the charger at night but it is nice to not have to hear the e-mail ding when automated e-mails come in at 3am.
I haven't had my Fuze very long, but with my Tilt I recall one day where I didn't make a single phone call, so Seven was the only thing running all day. I still had 90% battery life left after over 12 hours of being off the charger. I haven't been able to do such a test on my Fuze over an entire day, but from what I've seen I believe it is about the same.
The thing I noticed on the Fuze which drains the battery the most is doing anything where the screen is on. Obviously powering and lighting that beautiful VGA screen has its cost. I do have a program that adjusts the backlight better than the stock WM function called G-Light, it lets you set the backlight brightness based on the reading from the light sensor. The lower the light level it detects, the lower the backlight is set to. The stock settings are pretty conservative with the brightness so I believe it will help battery life some while I am using the phone.
pennywisdom said:
I have been using a program called Seven ( www.seven.com ) to take care of e-mails. It is a program that pushes your e-mails to your mobile outlook. I use it with gmail although yahoo also appears to be supported. From what I understand, maintaining a constant data connection with push is actually less battery intensive and uses less data than signing on every 15 minutes or so to do a scheduled check.
I used to use IMAP instead of POP with gmail and that took care of the problem of e-mails getting taken off the server. I believe that Seven uses IMAP as well because its function seems to be the same. Any e-mails I read on the phone are marked as read on the server and vice versa. I believe you can set it to not delete from the server if you delete an e-mail on the phone, but I honestly do not delete e-mails from my phone. On its own and also with Seven, Pocket Outlook can be set to only show e-mails from a certain number of days. I have mine set to 5 days. Any e-mails from before that simply do not show up on the phone. As a result, you never have to worry about cleaning up your inbox on the phone. At least, I don't have to, but if you have an extreme volume of e-mail, you may have to even if you only have it set to 5 days.
Also you can set Seven to stop pushing at night or on weekend days as well. My Fuze is on the charger at night but it is nice to not have to hear the e-mail ding when automated e-mails come in at 3am.
I haven't had my Fuze very long, but with my Tilt I recall one day where I didn't make a single phone call, so Seven was the only thing running all day. I still had 90% battery life left after over 12 hours of being off the charger. I haven't been able to do such a test on my Fuze over an entire day, but from what I've seen I believe it is about the same.
The thing I noticed on the Fuze which drains the battery the most is doing anything where the screen is on. Obviously powering and lighting that beautiful VGA screen has its cost. I do have a program that adjusts the backlight better than the stock WM function called G-Light, it lets you set the backlight brightness based on the reading from the light sensor. The lower the light level it detects, the lower the backlight is set to. The stock settings are pretty conservative with the brightness so I believe it will help battery life some while I am using the phone.
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i love when people get here before me !!! great post on one of my favorite apps :]]]]]] !!!!
First, thank you very much for the response.
Second, I checked into www.seven.com and it seems to indicate that Seven is offered through AT&T via Xpress Mail. I downloaded Xpress Mail and set it up for my Yahoo account, but it seems to have even less customization and control than the built-in e-mail client that came with the Fuze. It won't allow me to change any options, instead referring me to "Xpress Mail Settings" to change option. The Xpress Mail settings program offers virtually no choices whatsoever. I can turn Push off or on, and that's pretty much it.
Can you offer any words of wisdom on how I can customize the functionality?
Thanks much in advance.
Jamie
jayla said:
First, thank you very much for the response.
Second, I checked into www.seven.com and it seems to indicate that Seven is offered through AT&T via Xpress Mail. I downloaded Xpress Mail and set it up for my Yahoo account, but it seems to have even less customization and control than the built-in e-mail client that came with the Fuze. It won't allow me to change any options, instead referring me to "Xpress Mail Settings" to change option. The Xpress Mail settings program offers virtually no choices whatsoever. I can turn Push off or on, and that's pretty much it.
Can you offer any words of wisdom on how I can customize the functionality?
Thanks much in advance.
Jamie
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Ooh no that's not what you want to do. Seven works just fine through Pocket Outlook, there is no need to get another program.
Simply install Seven onto the phone, then run it. It should walk you through setup and you can choose Yahoo as your e-mail provider. Since you have already set it up, I would recommend either uninstalling it or removing the current account out of Seven.
pennywisdom said:
Ooh no that's not what you want to do. Seven works just fine through Pocket Outlook, there is no need to get another program.
Simply install Seven onto the phone, then run it. It should walk you through setup and you can choose Yahoo as your e-mail provider. Since you have already set it up, I would recommend either uninstalling it or removing the current account out of Seven.
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Ah, I see where I went astray. On the Seven website there is a large menu option at the top that says "How to Get Seven". So I clicked on that and it steered me toward Xpress Mail through AT&T. So I uninstalled Xpress Mail, signed up for the Seven Beta, and downloaded and installed it.
I set it up to sync with my Yahoo account, and that seemed to go well. I like the fact that I can select quiet hours. Previously I had my phone set to give no audio alerts for e-mails because I didn't like getting woken up in the middle of the night. ;-)
I've got a couple of questions:
1. When I look at Seven's General Settings, there are three options: Phone Data, Quiet Time, and Preferences. I have no problem getting Quiet Time and Preferences to work, but when I select Phone Data it prompts me for "The phone number of the device is" and then put the cursor in an input box. However, I can't type anything into the box either with the slide-out keyboard or with the on-screen keyboard. Is "Phone Data" something I need to be concerned with?
2. How does Seven work with regards to getting messages to my phone? Is my phone constantly "logged in" to Seven (and draining battery power)? If not, how does my phone know when an e-mail has been sent to me and it's time for it to download that e-mail?
Thanks so much for all the help everyone has been giving me on this issue.
Jamie
jayla said:
1. When I look at Seven's General Settings, there are three options: Phone Data, Quiet Time, and Preferences. I have no problem getting Quiet Time and Preferences to work, but when I select Phone Data it prompts me for "The phone number of the device is" and then put the cursor in an input box. However, I can't type anything into the box either with the slide-out keyboard or with the on-screen keyboard. Is "Phone Data" something I need to be concerned with?
2. How does Seven work with regards to getting messages to my phone? Is my phone constantly "logged in" to Seven (and draining battery power)? If not, how does my phone know when an e-mail has been sent to me and it's time for it to download that e-mail?
Thanks so much for all the help everyone has been giving me on this issue.
Jamie
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1. I believe that is just for Seven's own information, the grayed out box shows my phone number on my phone. I wouldn't worry about it.
2. I'm not 100% clear on how Seven operates regarding getting the data. I believe that their own server constantly checks your e-mail account and when it gets new mail, it pushes the mail to your phone immediately. Now, your phone will maintain a constant data connection in order to do this, so it does use up more battery than if your phone was not connected to the internet. The alternative is to set a scheduled send and receive, perhaps once every 10-15 minutes. This would have your phone connect to the internet, query the server, and then download any mail and disconnect.
According to what I've read regarding push e-mail, push actually uses less data because the act of querying the server and getting a response takes more data than a push connection. A push connection is sort of like a heartbeat, it only sends tiny packets of data to maintain the connection, sending more data when an e-mail actually comes in. I'm assuming that less data = less battery used, although that could be incorrect.
You can try your own test as far as the battery life goes, but I had to wait for a slow day where nobody called me and I didn't have to call anybody and could just let my phone sit there pushing e-mail all day. You could run that test and then run a control test where you completely disabled your e-mail for a day on the phone. If you can see your phone's battery life in a percentage, you can subtract the 2 days and figure out how much data per day your e-mail push connection actually requires. I'm thinking it's not going to be that much though.
Things are looking quite good so far. I'm glad I posted here.
One thing I'm having an issue with still, however, is that when I receive e-mails my phone doesn't give me a notification. E-mail is pushed instantly to my phone, and if I turn on the screen it visually shows a waiting e-mail with the little orange number (I use the built-in TouchPro interface on my Fuze), but my phone doesn't beep or vibrate.
I went into the Sounds & Notifications settings and under Notifications and verified that the "Play sound" box is checked and that a tone is selected from the drop-down menu (I even tested it to make sure the tone plays). I have "Flash light" checked and set for no limit, and "Vibrate" checked. Yet when e-mails are pushed to my phone none of those things happen.
Any ideas?
Jamie
jayla said:
Things are looking quite good so far. I'm glad I posted here.
One thing I'm having an issue with still, however, is that when I receive e-mails my phone doesn't give me a notification. E-mail is pushed instantly to my phone, and if I turn on the screen it visually shows a waiting e-mail with the little orange number (I use the built-in TouchPro interface on my Fuze), but my phone doesn't beep or vibrate.
I went into the Sounds & Notifications settings and under Notifications and verified that the "Play sound" box is checked and that a tone is selected from the drop-down menu (I even tested it to make sure the tone plays). I have "Flash light" checked and set for no limit, and "Vibrate" checked. Yet when e-mails are pushed to my phone none of those things happen.
Any ideas?
Jamie
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Ah yes, I was aware of that problem but I forgot that the version of Seven I am using is not the *official* release version. It's more of an in-between build. The notification problem is fixed though as it was a big complaint on the previous version. Something they did between the last 2 versions broke the notifications.
Anyway here's the link to the newest build
http://community.seven.com/files/client.ppcwm6.Release-18_0-327672-def_seven-preview.cab
Interesting. I followed the link and installed the version you indicated. It said on my screen that it was uninstalling the previously existing version of Seven from my phone in favor of the new version. Everything seemed to go fine. After the install, the phone reset, and all seemed to be working fine.
But I still don't get e-mail notifications.
Oh well, it's not that huge of a deal. Thanks much for all the help you've give me.
Jamie
jayla said:
Interesting. I followed the link and installed the version you indicated. It said on my screen that it was uninstalling the previously existing version of Seven from my phone in favor of the new version. Everything seemed to go fine. After the install, the phone reset, and all seemed to be working fine.
But I still don't get e-mail notifications.
Oh well, it's not that huge of a deal. Thanks much for all the help you've give me.
Jamie
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Hmm, I know that when I upgraded to the newest version and my notifications stopped, I backed it down to the older version and that one still worked fine. Then I refrained from upgrading until I found this cab file. I may have done a full uninstall first, but I'm not sure. Try uninstalling and reinstall that cab file again. Make sure to do a soft reset in between.
I know that the fix for notifications on the broken version was to turn on the pop-up. Then it would give you the sound and pop-up preview of the message. Try enabling that as well to see if you can get the sounds working, although like me you probably don't want to have that, just the sound notification.
Sadly, that doesn't fix the problem. I can get the pop-up to display, but e-mail messages won't activate an audio notification or cause the light to flash. All my other sounds and notifications (text messages, telephone calls, etc.) have always worked, so I'm not sure what the cause of this may be.
I'm going to be swamped for the next few days. Probably sometime over the weekend I'll look more into it. But thank you very much for all the help you've given me. Even without the audio notifications, this is a far superior way of handling mobile e-mail that what I was doing before.
Jamie
if you really have a battery problem, just buy a new extended battery off of eBay or something, it's only about $20. shipped. I did that and it works fine.
also, you can change the settings so that the email doesnt download every 30 min, instead change it to an hour or 2.
also, you have one more option...you can use the Seven app. It is a very fast email client without draining your battery. Because you don't have 3G service in your town, you don't have to worry about turning off the 3G....but if you are in an area with 3G service for a while, just turn off 3G. this way you don't use as much of the battery, but you can still access the network and you won't have that much of a problem.
I use the SEVEN email program to have my Yahoo mail sent to my phone. It's great, free, etc., etc. The one thing I want to do is change how often it checks for new mail. My Touch Pro's battery dies pretty quickly so I'm doing everything I can to minimize the drain on it. There's nothing in the settings to dictate a time frame(say every 2 hours), only a way to set certain days to manual check. I have it set for manual check everyday until I can figure this out. Was hoping someone might know their way around the SEVEN registry entries. Any help is appreciated. Thanks.
brandontowey said:
I use the SEVEN email program to have my Yahoo mail sent to my phone. It's great, free, etc., etc. The one thing I want to do is change how often it checks for new mail. My Touch Pro's battery dies pretty quickly so I'm doing everything I can to minimize the drain on it. There's nothing in the settings to dictate a time frame(say every 2 hours), only a way to set certain days to manual check. I have it set for manual check everyday until I can figure this out. Was hoping someone might know their way around the SEVEN registry entries. Any help is appreciated. Thanks.
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Pretty sure this isn't possible as the whole purpose of SEVEN is to provide Push email.
You can try using yahoo mobile or use some other email account and forward your yahoo mail to say a POP3 account.
As said above Seven is designed to provide realtime push email. It also says on their site that to enable this to happen the software maintains an open GPRS connection to their servers at all times unless you use the weekends/night sleep options.
I have been using it successfully for some time now and while it does run the battery down it is a small price to pay for free push mail from many accounts while keeping all the accounts distinct.
Hi,
is there a way on WP7 to create an time schedule for synching with outlook just like under Windows mobile 6.5?
i really miss this feature...
thnx
Samsung OMNI7
WP7 doesn't have the ability to talk to Outlook directly. However, it can talk to Exchange servers, or anything else that uses the Exchange ActiveSync (EAS) protocol. If you've got any such account, including Gmail, it's possible to edit it in Outlook and the changes will sync to the phone. It can also pull your calendar from Windows Live, and there's a tool that will allow Outlook to access and modify that calendar too.
To answer the question the OP posted - No, there is not currently (as far as I know) any way to set up a schedule for Exchange syncing. It is 'push' enabled by default, which would normally use less battery than a schedule.
I miss this also - I used to set mine up for 'push' during waking hours, and not at all at night so I did not get woken up...now I just mute my phone lol
Well, you already can (and have been able to since release) schedule email sync to occur only so often (every 15 min, 30 min, or 60 min) as well as immediately (push) or never (except manually). It's available in Sync Settings for all email accounts...
Not sure why you think Push uses less battery than scheduling. Push email requires the phone maintain a data connection that it's always listening on. Also, the phone automatically silences email notifications (if you have them enabled) at night. The hours are settable in the registry, but the defaults are sane for most people. No need to mute the whole phone.
GoodDayToDie said:
Well, you already can (and have been able to since release) schedule email sync to occur only so often (every 15 min, 30 min, or 60 min) as well as immediately (push) or never (except manually). It's available in Sync Settings for all email accounts...
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Correct, that is available, but this is not what the OP asked for. The OP was asking for the ability to TIME schedule, like you could with Windows Mobile of old. ie. Have a working hours period, and a non-working hours period that is user-definable. So he could end up with, for example:
10am-5pm - As items arrive
5pm - 10am - Never, or Every 4 hours
This you cannot do.
Not sure why you think Push uses less battery than scheduling. Push email requires the phone maintain a data connection that it's always listening on.
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To be fair, it does depend what schedule you have set, and how many emails you get. Also battery life on varying phones in varying conditions differs hugely. That being said, the following is generally true:
'Push' email with an exchange server does not keep a fully active data conection open, that passes a lot of data. The way it works, is it has a 'heartbeat' that keeps in contact with the server, and it only initiates a full data download when there is an email to receive. The 'heartbeat' uses very little data and battery power. When you have you email set up to receive emails every hour, the phone has to initiate a full data connection and data download, every hour, just to determine if there are any emails or not - this uses more data/battery. Now, if on average over a period you receive emails less frequently than your schedule is set up, then 'push' will generally use less battery. Also, it is probably fair to say, that if there is a reason for it to be important that you absolutely must check your email every hour or less, you will probably want it set to 'push' so you get them straight away. Downloading ten emails as they arrive over the period of an hours, will use roughly the same amount of data as downloading them all at the same time at the end of the hour - the emails will be the same size irrespective of when they are downloaded, the only slight difference being that on 'push' there might be a small amount of 'logon' each time.
This is only true for Exchange push email, which I assume the OP was talking about, as he said 'Outlook' which is how it is labeled on the phone. Other email accounts, such as gmail, may work differently.
Also, the phone automatically silences email notifications (if you have them enabled) at night. The hours are settable in the registry, but the defaults are sane for most people. No need to mute the whole phone.
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Well, you learn something new every day - I can't say I have noticed this, I am sure mine notifies all night..What hours is it silenced by default? I will have to test this to see if mine works!
Hmm, I would have expected that the scheduled sync (as opposed to push mode) was effectively a very slow heartbeat, and if there isn't any mail to grab it uses no more power than a normal heartbeat (but does it much less often, thus using even less power). I suppose somebody could mess up implementing that and do it in a less logical way, though.
Gmail, if you use the default connection type, uses Exchange ActiveSync (EAS) protocol - the same one used by real Exchange servers. This enables Push mode, as you may notice. IMAP supports push on the desktop, but it requires a constant connection and is too expensive on the phone, so you have to use a schedule. POP3 (do people really still use that?) doesn't support push at all.
I've heard the phone is supposed to have a "quiet hours" from something like 10 PM to 8 AM, though I don't remember the exact times. I can't find the reference to them in the registry that I though was there, though. In any case, it doesn't do anything for SMS, app push notifications, alarms, or incoming calls, of course. It's possible I'm isremembering, but I get email at all hours and I don't recall hearing it at night.
i have the same question, this is a important function.
Lads,
Thanks for all the answers.
Just to get this straight, i am connected to an Exchange and want Not to get waked up, when i receive an Email at 2 am. Under Windows mobile i could Set up an schedule, Let's say from 8 pm to 7 am there will be no synch with Exchange... And this is the Feature i Miss...