Configure GMail with IMAP4/SSL on Desktop Mail Clients and Mobile Phones (Nokia S60, Windows Mobile, iPhone, Sony Ericsson UIQ, Blackberry & Motorola)
I was waiting for this feature for a very-very long time, as many users did, and at last Googleannounced the rollout of free IMAP4 over SSL access for GMail. POP is nice, but IMAP is a much better option. Among the advantages, you’re always connected to the server, more clients can connect to the same account, you can obtain the text from a message without the attachments and the state information is synchronized (you can add labels from the client, read or delete a message and Gmail will synchronize). “As some of you know, IMAP is the best way to access your email from multiple devices allowing you to keep your Gmail message state information such as whether or not a message has been read, replied to, or deleted synchronized across any IMAP4 client on desktop or mobile devices, since these flags are stored on the server unlike POP3.
A brief review of why IMAP is better than POP
|
IMAP |
POP |
| Can view just message headers, and then choose which messages to download | Have to download all messages at once |
| Can delete/move a message without having to download it | Have to download all messages |
| Can download just text body of a message | Have to download entire message (including any large attachments) |
| Can view messages in all folders | Can only download messages from Inbox |
| Can access messages both at home/work, and on the road through the web interface | Once downloaded, can only access messages at home/work |
Gmail added IMAP support, but you’ll have to enable it by going to Settings > Forwarding and POP/IMAP. Because the new feature is slowly rolled-out, you may not see it, but rest assured it will be available in the next days. Here are a few resources to setup and configure IMAP4 over SSL for a multitude of desktop and mobile clients:
- Nokia S60
- Sony Ericsson UIQ3. This tutorial points to a help guide from Synchronica. Just substitute Synchronica’s server names with Google GMail’s IMAP server.
- Blackberry
- Apple iPhone
- Motorola Razr (Note: External guide, similiar to Sony Ericsson above)
- Windows Mobile
- Outlook 2003
- Outlook 2007
- Thunderbird
- Windows Mail Desktop
- Outlook Express
- Mac Apple Mail
I am a user of KMail on my Linux box, and for KMail to work with IMAP you only have to change your Host server from pop.gmail.com to imap.gmail.com and change port to 995, with SSL Encryption enabled. The rest stays the same.
Remeber to enable IMAP in your GMail account, goto your Settings, Forwarding and POP/IMAP and select Enable IMAP. Check Gmail IMAP Access help center for more information.
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November 13th, 2007 at 3:57 pm
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