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Funambol Push Email

Anyone with any experience using Funambol? It's an open source push email solution. It seems to be the only Exchange competitor open source has to offer. I'm installing it now to my server so I'll post my experience. Any thing I should watch out for during the install?
Thanks

LMAO lack of interest apparently!

I tried myfunambol today... Setting up an account and installing everything was easy. Seemed to sync my contacts, calendar and tasks just fine... but I couldn't use more than one email account which was a bummer. But more importantly... the one email account I did use.. gmail... Would push the email to my device after about 5-10 minutes. It would notify me that there was new mail... but when I would go to the Funambol account (won't let you rename it in pocket outlook from what I could tell) it would say Sending/Recieving... and after it was done... there was nothing in my inbox. It did manage to get them after I clicked on Menu > Send/Recieve... but it was still spotty. I didn't get that "reliable" feeling from it.
I tried it for about an hour and even synced my Outlook on my desktop. The syncing of contacts and what not seemed fine... but the email didn't seem to work for me.
I'm on the 8525 btw.
I decided to just go back to mail2web for now... and just forward my work and my personal email to one email account. BAH!
I wish pocket Outlook would just support IMAP idle for gmail already... that and PPC PimBackup is all I would need.
Mark

funambol does actually support instant push, and as soon as the server sees new mail, your phone will sync it.
Your problem is that if you're using the my.funambol free hosted service, their server is only polling your email every 15 min.
Basically, you're notified as soon as the server has new mail for you, however the server only checks for you on 15 min intervals.
Why?
Because the public email servers (yahoo, gmail, aol, etc) dont like get pounded with constant email checking. I was told even blackberry servers check public servers on intervals for this reason (private domains will be instant tho).
If you have an ISP or private domain email, and you're nice to funambol's support team, you can ask them to set your account to check more often. I don't know if they'll do this for everyone, but they set mine to check every 1 min. Now the longest I have to wait for email to arrive is one minute, the actual time averages around 10 sec.
Or you can set up your own funambol server if you'd like...

Ah, that explains the delay.
I was hoping the Funambol server would implement IMAP IDLE connection to gmail so that the emails would be pushed much faster than a 15 minute polling. I'll have to do some more research.

Dishe,
You seem very knowledgeable about Funambol. Do you know if it support HTML email with the Windows Mobile plug-in? It is currently giving me plain-text, I thought maybe there was a setting I could do to change this. Thanks.

www.nuevasync.com
No joke, 1000x better than any other sync solution. Only works with Gapps, but I bet that's what 90% of you guys are looking for anyway.

TerryMathews said:
www.nuevasync.com
No joke, 1000x better than any other sync solution. Only works with Gapps, but I bet that's what 90% of you guys are looking for anyway.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
From their website, it does not seem to support push email (YET).

I checked out Nuevasync and it is awesome! It syncs contacts and calendar perfectly and doesn't require any software downloads. It uses activesync. Thanks a lot for the tip!

is really useful for me, I am glad to read it here.

Hotmail sync?

I tried the MyTouch 3G last year and found that it's email sync with Hotmail was poor. If you deleted/read something from the device, it would not delete it/mark it read on the server. I tried the K-9 program, but it was pretty lame as it did not fix the above issues.
Has this been fixed? I really enjoyed all other aspects of Android, but this issue is a necessity for a phone for me.
Also, the native MS exchange server support only covered email. Have they added contacts and calendar syncing? When I had the MyTouch 3G, I bought the program "Touchdown" and that worked slick.
I am just curious to see if the Android people had advanced into the core MS functionality yet.
Thanks for any input.

POP is notoriously hard to keep in sync among multiple clients. There's usually a 'mark as read on download' setting that works ok if you only have one POP client downloading mail. When I last checked Hotmail didn't have that ability but maybe they've done some improvements. If they have an IMAP or ActiveSync option that would be the ideal solution.
In my case I don't use my Hotmail as my primary account but I still have email that goes to it. I use Gmail's ability to sync with external POP accounts to download and label my Hotmail email. This way I get my Hotmail email pushed to me like my Gmail email and I don't have to use separate email clients to read them. I also prefer Gmail's web interface and spam filter so I don't even bother going to Hotmail's site any more. The problem with this approach is that Android's Gmail app doesn't allow you to change the 'from' field so if you reply to a Hotmail email it will be from your Gmail address. This isn't an issue for me since I essentially use my Hotmail as a read-only account. If you have a similar use case then this method would probably work well for you.

Thanks for the input. It sounds like things are about the same as what I was experiencing.

underperforming email application on Evo

Coming from BlackBerry, I have gotten worried several times already with my new Evo.
In my former Blackberry, also with Sprint, you sent me an email and before three seconds (specially on my Hotmail account) I would feel my Blackberry vibrating already. It was blazing amazing.
On my Evo, I have my email set to sync every 5 minutes, which is the max allowed by the settings. It's set for 5 minutes peak and not peak, and the 7 days of the week.
Last night at 11:30pm I received an email sent at 7pm. The time stamp on the email was 7pm, the email was received at 11:30pm. I saw it because I manually synchronized, otherwise..... This would have never happened with the BlackBerry (who own their own email servers, which have no equal, now I see).
4 hours 30 minutes is not acceptable. This is the worst example, but not the only one. Some of them took 2 hours, some 10 minutes, and about 75% are on time.
The sync is not working every 5 minutes as it should. It's like it just dies out. I have a strong 3G signal, so signal is not the issue.
My phone is still virgin (stock).
Exactly the same is going on with the Weather widget, it wasn't sync-ing, but now the sync settings grayed out on me. I can't even change the settings. The weather application works for me only when I manually sync, yesterday morning it was raining and there was a huge shining sun on my screen, so it's not accu---rate. This noon I still had a full moon on my screen.
I wonder what's going on.

K9 mail brah

Thanks. Installing k9Mail now....

Did u try exchange settings ?
It should push mail s instantly..

drgopoos said:
Did u try exchange settings ?
It should push mail s instantly..
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
no, but I'll try... thanks!

Any change you use a gmail account? The gmail app sends a notification as soon as the e-mail is received, just like the blackberry. If not, perhaps you should forward your e-mails (from hotmail) to a gmail account and bypass the 5 minute syncing issue.
Also, if you're using a task killer, be sure you have your e-mails apps listed as "ignore" otherwise you might kill the syncing and automatic updating.

To summarize:
- If you use Gmail use the Gmail app.
- If you use Exchange use the Exchange option in the Email app.
- If you use IMAP use K9 Mail.
All of the above options will give you push email that is pretty much instant.

rdude said:
To summarize:
- If you use Gmail use the Gmail app.
- If you use Exchange use the Exchange option in the Email app.
- If you use IMAP use K9 Mail.
All of the above options will give you push email that is pretty much instant.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
email app in andorid has to be refined more, especially push and sync.
I do get into some issues at times, but with froyo , hopefully its going to be solved.
( so far the best sync option for email for me has been my jaibrokeb iphone . no flames please. i am not an apple fanboy and i have never used blackberry )

parousia15 said:
Any change you use a gmail account? The gmail app sends a notification as soon as the e-mail is received, just like the blackberry. If not, perhaps you should forward your e-mails (from hotmail) to a gmail account and bypass the 5 minute syncing issue.
Also, if you're using a task killer, be sure you have your e-mails apps listed as "ignore" otherwise you might kill the syncing and automatic updating.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Hi, thanks. Yes, I have a gmail account but that''s the one I just created for the market application. I have had that Hotmail account for about 10 years or more... That one worked perfectly with BBerry. I installed K-9 Mail, which looks great but keeps logging error messages "server allows to log in only once every 15 minutes." I configured this to sync every minute, so I get 15 error messages before it works (syncs). At least the HTC stock mail doesn't have that problem.
I may need to switch to gmail..at least some of the email traffic. I have a task killer but it doesn't kill the mail application or any other system appl. Just flickr, Facebook, Amazon MP3...

rdude said:
To summarize:
- If you use Gmail use the Gmail app.
- If you use Exchange use the Exchange option in the Email app.
- If you use IMAP use K9 Mail.
All of the above options will give you push email that is pretty much instant.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks. With Exchange you guys mean an enterprise MS Exchange server, correct? which I don't have access to.
That's what I miss the most of my BlackBerry, the speed to get emails. I made tests with iPhones, Androids, and even Blackberry's on ATT and this Sprint BlackBerry was the best. Not even 3 seconds most of the time, using Hotmail.

Hotmail has recently released the exchange settings. U should try that

It keeps happening with this HTC stock email application. I have 3 different sorts of email accounts setup on it, and it seems that only the one on the foreground works, the other 2 in the background are asleep. If I get an email in one of those sleeping mailboxes, I don't even get a notification, led, nor sound, or anything. I just received an email from 7AM at this time, 1123AM, and just because I checked because I was curious, otherwise.... That prompted me to write this. Just out of frustration. One of those email accounts in the background is a Google account, and it didn't work. I will have to split them into different email applications according to the type of account, as suggested above. I have a strong 3G signal. It has to be something in the implementation. The task killer just kills those flickr, Amazon, Facebook, that's about it. It doesn't kill any system files. Not even google talk.
I'll keep investigating.

Update
In case somebody has the same problem, I am tracking down what's going on here.
Definitely, the problem is caused by one process the Task Killer....is killing...
I'm very surprised. The tasks that are being killed are mostly HTC programs that apparently shouldn't affect the performance of MAIL and WEATHER, but it does. Probably, this is also affecting the other issue I have, the setting of location services being permanently turned off.
Now, which application is it, that is obviously being used by MAIL and WEATHER?
Could it be FOOTPRINTS? Could it be HTC Facebook? Could it be AMAZON MUSIC STORE? Could it be SPRINT NAVIGATION? Or Qik?
Basically, those are the processes being killed.
The way I found out was killing the killer, and restarting all these applications. All of a sudden MAIL and WEATHER started working as expected. Mail refreshes every 5 minutes.
Maybe by killing one of those "dummy" programs above, also kills a thread of hidden processes being used by Weather and Mail.
Interesting.
(maybe somebody knows about this already here or in another forum).

[req] email app allows moving mail between folders

Hello
I like the email client that comes with android (the one for accessing secondary email accounts). It does seem to have a major limitation though, you can not move mail around to different folders (e.g. lets say an important message ended up in my spam folder by accident, I can not see any way to move that message to the inbox)
If this is in fact possible could someone please tell me how to do it, but if it is not (which from what I can tell this is the case) can someone recommend an email app that supports this function.
Thank You
***UPDATE***
Yes I am using the vanilla/AOSP email app being that I am running cm6
The email account that I am connecting to is my AOL account. I am not 100% certain but I thought AOL uses IMAP.
So I guess the new questions are 1) does AOL use IMAP and 2)does the AOSP email app allow you to move emails between folders

If what you are accessing is a POP3 account, then I believe no email client permits you do do this (as this sounds like a sync function only found in IMAP accounts).
What I found to work best (and easiest) is to have my alternate email accounts foward all my mail to my gmail account, and have my gmail account tag each email with the name of the incoming account (hotmail emails are taged hotmail, etc.).
This lets me recieve all my email with one single app (Gmail), provides me with push notifications for every email, permits me to sync emails effortlessly, an so on.

dsMA said:
Hello
I like the email client that comes with android (the one for accessing secondary email accounts). It does seem to have a major limitation though, you can not move mail around to different folders (e.g. lets say an important message ended up in my spam folder by accident, I can not see any way to move that message to the inbox)
If this is in fact possible could someone please tell me how to do it, but if it is not (which from what I can tell this is the case) can someone recommend an email app that supports this function.
Thank You
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I'd think that any email client can do it, but I personally use K9 Mail and love it, and it certainly does this.
As the above poster says, if you're using POP this might not be possible. IMAP it certainly is. You should not being using POP anyway.

Don't know about the vanilla android one but I know the HTC Email program will let you move between folders.

Gmail and email

Yea it seems gmail never fails to give me my email notifications right on time, right when I receive mail I get a notification no more then 2 minutes later. But yahoo seems to never update and I get my email like 30 min to a hour later. So this must be droid telling me if I don't have gmail I won't get my notifications on time. Very bias of the android OS. And it sends nobody has a sure
fix for thus as I have searched the forums and have used k9 as well it all fails.
Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I897 using XDA App

Both GMail and Exchange mail support the feature called Push Email -- it pushes into your phone's inbox as soon as the mail server receives the email.
How do you setup your Yahoo email? I guess you used the POP3 email access which is pretty dumb and doesn't support push email (your phone has to check the mail server every so often to see if there is mail there.
There should be a Yahoo mail app created by Yahoo that also supports push email. You have to use that app in order to get the push email from Yahoo.
Hotmail now also supports push email via Exchange email support. So, no new email app needed.

I have one of my yahoo accounts set up on the yahoo app, but it only allows for one account as far as I know
Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I897 using XDA App

Then, call Yahoo and ask them to support multiple accounts. Yahoo, Gmail and hotmail all use properitary protocols for their email in addition to support the old POP3 protocol. Gmail and Hotmail have the added advantage of supporting Exchange ActiveSync. So, in order to take advantage of advanced feature like push email, you will need the native client from the respective email provider or use Exchange ActiveSync if there is support for it. It is not any kind of bais in Andriod OS. It is the fault of Yahoo falling way behind the technology curve. POP3 protocol is created like 20 to 30 years ago. Back then, emails often take days to reach the destination.
BTW, the phone's built-in email client only supports 2 Exchange accounts max. I know Gmail client supports multiple gmail accounts as well but not sure how many accounts it can support.

Yahoo does have an app, whether it's any good is a different story. I have tried both, the email app and the messenger app and they are very laggy, almost rendering the phone useless. Then again ymmv