Email

There are several ways to get, send and read email on Maemo devices such as the N900.

Contents

[edit] N900 Email Client

The default Email Client on the N900 is Modest

Modest was presented at the Maemo Summit 2009. The slides are available on the Modest website

The N900 includes a setup wizard that helps you to set up your email account. Please make sure that you select the correct service provider. DO NOT SELECT "OTHER"until you have scrolled through the service provider list (this is not obvious) in the wizard to see if your provider is already there. You will see a long list of providers starting with :-

  • Other
  • Mail for Exchange (for connecting to Exchange servers only)
  • Nokia Messaging (If you want push email from your provider)
  • .MAC
  • 3Mail (three.co.uk)
  • AIM
  • AOL
  • Beeb.net
  • Bluyonder
  • Breathe
  • BT Click
  • BT OpenWorld
  • BT Yahoo
  • Clara.net
  • demon
  • Force9

.......

[edit] Push Email

The N900 comes with two options for people looking for a push type e-mail service like Blackberry or Microsoft over the air ActiveSync.

[edit] Mail for Exchange (MfE)

Main article: Mail for Exchange

This is an implementation of the Microsoft ActiveSync protocol that connects an over the air Exchange server to the N900 e-mail client and Calendar and Contacts.

Google mail also supports ActiveSync these days. Though it is not supported, some users have reported success.

Nokia N900 works perfectly with ActiveSync on the free Outlook.com accounts (for those who feel free to touch Microsoft services.) One needs to leave the domain field empty, use s.outlook.com as the server, and everything else should work.

[edit] MfE and Digital Certificates

MfE depends on the system to handle Digital Certificates. If you have come off a Symbian device then you would expect MfE to prompt you to save a certificate when it does a first sync. On the N900 you will have to save the certificate yourself onto the N900 and open it up in the file browser to install it. You can check the Certificate is installed under settings.

See this post on how its done http://talk.maemo.org/showpost.php?p=422526&postcount=98

also here http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php?t=37087

[edit] Limitations of MfE

MfE on the N900 is only designed to work with Exchange 2003 (since PR1.1) and 2007 servers, although Exchange 2010 should also work. Servers will also need to have support for Non Provisioned Devices Enabled in order to have synchronization work.

The following features are not supported by the Maemo 5 implementation of Mail for Exchange:

  • Categories support
  • Corporate Directory Lookup (can be imported in PR 1.1)
  • Email search on Server or Client
  • Marking messages for follow up
  • Only one active MfE account is supported

MfE is included on your N900, no need to install, but here is the home page for MfE for other Nokia devices. Note that MfE on N900 is a separate implementation from this:

Mail for Exchange download page

[edit] Known Problems of MfE

With the first retail release of the N900 there are a number of known issues. Many users have worked around these issues. You can follow MfE discussions on this thread http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php?t=35136

[edit] Nokia Messaging

If you already have a favorite webmail service, but would like your email "pushed" to you then this is what this option was designed for. Nokia messaging can connect up to 10 email accounts at one time, and you can choose which account you send from. Nokia also provide their own webmail service (Ovi Mail) that can be linked to this. Nokia messaging provides for easy setup as it already knows the server settings for a large number of the email services out there. Nokia Messaging only handles email and not Contacts and Calendar or Tasks.

Nokia Messaging http://email.nokia.com/account/home.action

[edit] IMAP Idle for Push Email

Many modern mail servers support the IMAP Idle feature, which allows your email client to monitor an inbox. Sadly Modest on the N900 has this feature disabled for power reasons.

It is possible to get push email from an IMAP server using a service like Nuevasync or Z-Push that proxies between IMAP with IDLE and the Exchange Active Sync protocol (which Modest does support). Also many commercial mail servers implement Active Sync, and can therefore provide push email service directly.

[edit] Desktop style e-mail using the Modest e-mail client

Some people want to be able to have a copy of all their e-mails local to their device, just like Outlook or Lotus notes. If your e-mail service provider provides POP or IMAP support (which they all should) then the N900 has a very good email client called Modest. Modest currently seems to have problems dealing with very large inboxes such is typical with Gmail accounts, as it will try and copy all of your mails to the device. There is a guide to improving Modest email sync reliability

The N900 includes a large number of popular email providers server addresses. make sure that you scroll down the list of service providers in the setup wizard and choose the one you need, to save you having to find out your service providers information.

Modest e-mail

[edit] Secure IMAP Email

users have reported success using IMAPS over SSL. make sure your digital certificates are installed.

see thread here http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php?t=37078&highlight=certificate

[edit] Gmail and IMAP access

Gmail does not offer IMAP Access by default it needs to be switched on. There is a good Article of IMAP vs POP here http://gmailblog.blogspot.com/2008/05/getting-gmail-anywhere-imap-versus-pop.html

And Instructions on Turning on IMAP http://mail.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=77695&topic=12891

If you enable Google Labs on your Gmail account you can select which folders (labels) are visible through IMAP. This can significantly reduce your data usage and the time it takes to send and receive (down to a few seconds on 2G if you only want to see new emails and a few others such as "Starred" emails).

[edit] Yahoo! Mail and IMAP

Yahoo supports IMAP access. However, you need to setup your account with a GPRS or 3G connection. After that, you can access your mailbox via wifi connection

Here are the settings

  • Account Title: <Whatever you like>
  • Name: <Your Name>
  • Username: <Full email address (e.g., bill@yahoo.com)>
  • Password: <Is the password you login to Yahoo! with>
  • E-mail address: <Full email address (e.g., bill@yahoo.com)>
  • Incoming Server: imap.mail.yahoo.com
  • Secure authentication: Tick
  • Secure connection: SSL
  • Incoming Port: 993 (requires SSL)
  • Outgoing Server: smtp.mail.yahoo.com
  • Secure authentication: Login
  • Username: <Full email address (e.g., bill@yahoo.com)>
  • Password: <Is the password you login to Yahoo! with>
  • Secure connection: SSL
  • Outgoing Port: 465 (requires SSL)

[edit] Webmail

The Browser in the N900 is very powerful and supports most webmail services including GMail and Hotmail.

Note: Some webmail services default to a mobile view, when using MicroB (N900's default browser). In order to view these sites, as though using a desktop, it is necessary to alter the User Agent String (UA). A User Agent String, User Agent or UA is the name (i.e. a string) that a browser calls itself when connecting to a website. One such tool to change MicroB's UA is User Agent Tool Discussion and Package . Altering the User Agent does not alter the browser, it merely changes the way the browser reports itself to websites; expect sites to load more slowly when using an alternate UA.

[edit] Gmail

You can access a Internet tablet friendly version of Gmail by pointing your browser at http://mail.google.com/mail/x/gdlakb-/gp/

Hopefully a version of macuco will be ported to the N900 from the N810 that gives you finger friendly access to the gmail site.

Google wave has also been tried, and appears to work to some degree. You may need to use the Onscreen Cursor to get to some of the UI elements.

[edit] Hotmail

The mobile page for Windows Live Services (including Hotmail) is http://mobile.live.com . Although the page is intended for mobile users, it is not very tablet friendly. For example, the font size is too small for a Hi-res screen (like N900).

For the Modest client, Hotmail does not offer IMAP access. It only offers POP3 access. The user experience is not very good as a result. For instance deleting emails on your device doe not delete on your server. The best option for Hotmail is to use Nokia Messaging.

[edit] Yahoo mail

Yahoo Mail provides a mobile phone friendly version. http://m.yahoo.com/mail

Yahoo Mail also supports IMAP access. See above

In addition, you can push your Yahoo mails to your devices using Nokia Messaging.

If you use Yahoo Mail Plus!, you can have POP3. The settings can be found in the setup wizard.

[edit] Ovimail

Nokia provides its own webmail service designed to work with your mobile. create an account here https://mail.ovi.com/ Users have reported success combining Ovi mail with Nokia Messaging to get push email.

[edit] Lotus Web Mail

The Domino Web access's default user interface requires using double click, which per default used for zooming in the browser. The Domino offers another Light weight web user interfaces via the bellow urls.

http://<server.domain>/<mailfile path>/?OpenDatabase&ui=dwa_ulite

http://<server.domain>/<mailfile path>/?OpenDatabase&ui=webmail

Please add services that you have tried

[edit] Third Party Email options

Please add your experience with other email options here

Users have reported success with Nuevasync. This service allows you to sync from various sources including any IMAP server, Google mail, contacts and calendar, and also Yahoo contacts, with your N900.

[edit] Lotus Domino (Notes)

The backend for Notes is called Domino Server. Domino 8.5.1 was released in October 2009 and added an optional software module called Lotus Notes Traveler. This module implements ActiveSync.

In theory the Mail for Exchange (MfE) application should work against Lotus Notes Traveler. However it does not, because the Lotus Notes Traveler implements the ActiveSync on non-standard path and there seems to be version incompatibilities between the Maemo version of MfE and the Lotus Notes Traveler.

There is no support for using MfE against a Lotus Notes Traveler server.

      • Correction, it will work, albeit unsupported... you can change the

NTSConfigTemplate.xml file in the .../notesdata/traveler/cfg/ directory to turn off policy enforcing and use a non-standard path.

Search for my post for instructions on talk.maemo.org (cotoole)

[edit] Additional Resources

Nokia Messaging options website http://messaging.nokia.com/site/main.do

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