Any way to retrieve Cingular cell phone email without a cell phone?

Again, thanks.

My conclusion from all this is that if a person wants to:
1. Have the OPTION of receiving wanted emails via his/her cell phone,
AND
2. Also have the option of receiving these same wanted emails via
his/her computer (either when his/her cell phone is not available, or
to avoid any fees associated with receiving these wanted emails),
AND
3. Does not want to ever have to pay for any incoming UNwanted emails
to his/her cell phone...

....then the solution would be to:

1. Disable MMS email messaging, because it goes directly to the phone
and you are therefore charged for ALL incoming MMS emails, wanted or
not,
AND
2. Use the Cingular Media, Google, Yahoo, etc. web-based email, and
then only access this email via cell phone when you really need to,
AND
3. If you need to always be notified immediately of all incoming
emails, then set up your web-based email to alert you on your cell
phone when any emails come in, OR...if you do not need immediate
notification, then instead just tell your contacts to call you on your
cell phone when their business with you or their email to you is
urgent.

The only scenario I can think of where the above might NOT be the best
plan would if the ratio of urgent to non-urgent emails per day for a
user was so high that the cost of the alerts plus the WAP access to
fetch the emails would exceed the cost of simply having them all
arrive via MMS (where no additional alert is necessary)...but it would
seem that this ratio would have to be VERY high in order offset the
incurred charges for all of the NON-urgent MMS emails received. It
would seem that once a person started disclosing their MMS email
address to their contacts, their MMS email inbox would then start to
look like their POP3 or web-based email box, complete with SPAM,
unwanted forwarded jokes from friends, etc., and to "add insult to
injury", they would be charged for all of these emails.

And another disadvantage of using the MMS email (if I understand it
correctly...see below) would be that you would have to sacrifice
having a "backup" copy of each email received (with web-based email
the emails would exist on the server until you deleted them), so that
if you broke or lost your cell phone, you would also lose any MMS
emails that it currently contained. This doesn't happen every day,
but if the email was an order or inquiry from a customer that doesn't
get processed because the email disappeared along with your cell
phone, it would only take one event like this to cost a user a lot of
money and/or grief.

The validity of the last paragraph, above, depends upon the answer to
this question:
I think that I read in here somewhere that once MMS emails are sent to
your cell phone, they no longer exist anywhere but inside of your cell
phone at that point. If true...then if you break or lose your phone
while it still has unread MMS email messages in it, are those emails
not then lost forever (whereas the web-based emails would still exist
on their servers)?
OR do I have the facts wrong, and you have to actually OPEN or DELETE
the MMS emails on your cell phone before Cingular's copy is deleted.
Does Cingular's copy disappear as soon as the MMS email is
successfully RECIEVED by your phone, or does it require action by the
cell phone owner (opening the MMS email or actively deleting it)
before Cingular's copy is deleted?

Jerry

---

› See More: Any way to retrieve Cingular cell phone email without a cell phone?

[POSTED TO alt.cellular.cingular - REPLY ON USENET PLEASE]

In <[email protected]> on Wed, 10 May 2006 17:28:17 GMT, Jerry
wrote:

>My conclusion from all this is that if a person wants to:
>1. Have the OPTION of receiving wanted emails via his/her cell phone,
>AND
>2. Also have the option of receiving these same wanted emails via
>his/her computer (either when his/her cell phone is not available, or
>to avoid any fees associated with receiving these wanted emails),
>AND
>3. Does not want to ever have to pay for any incoming UNwanted emails
>to his/her cell phone...
>
>...then the solution would be to:
>
>1. Disable MMS email messaging, because it goes directly to the phone
>and you are therefore charged for ALL incoming MMS emails, wanted or
>not,

You may not be able to have just MMS disabled -- you might have to disable all
messaging (SMS as well as MMS) -- I don't know for sure.

>AND
>2. Use the Cingular Media, Google, Yahoo, etc. web-based email, and
>then only access this email via cell phone when you really need to,

If you use Google Mail (Gmail) as the mail host, retrieved email can be
automatically archived for indefinite access by Web browser. Don't know about
the other services.

>AND
>3. If you need to always be notified immediately of all incoming
>emails, then set up your web-based email to alert you on your cell
>phone when any emails come in,

Google Mail doesn't have alerts.
Yahoo Mail does have alerts.
Don't know about others.

>OR...if you do not need immediate
>notification, then instead just tell your contacts to call you on your
>cell phone when their business with you or their email to you is
>urgent.

Another option, if you have a suitable POP3 email client in your phone (as in
the case of phones from Motorola and Sony Ericsson), is to configure that
email client to download either headers or entire email at regular intervals.
That would of course incur data charges, but unlimited data can be had for
only $20 per month, and is handy for lots of other things as well.

>The only scenario I can think of where the above might NOT be the best
>plan would if the ratio of urgent to non-urgent emails per day for a
>user was so high that the cost of the alerts plus the WAP access to
>fetch the emails would exceed the cost of simply having them all
>arrive via MMS (where no additional alert is necessary)...but it would
>seem that this ratio would have to be VERY high in order offset the
>incurred charges for all of the NON-urgent MMS emails received. It
>would seem that once a person started disclosing their MMS email
>address to their contacts, their MMS email inbox would then start to
>look like their POP3 or web-based email box, complete with SPAM,
>unwanted forwarded jokes from friends, etc., and to "add insult to
>injury", they would be charged for all of these emails.

Spam filtering can help. Google Mail has very good spam filtering.

>And another disadvantage of using the MMS email (if I understand it
>correctly...see below) would be that you would have to sacrifice
>having a "backup" copy of each email received (with web-based email
>the emails would exist on the server until you deleted them), so that
>if you broke or lost your cell phone, you would also lose any MMS
>emails that it currently contained. This doesn't happen every day,
>but if the email was an order or inquiry from a customer that doesn't
>get processed because the email disappeared along with your cell
>phone, it would only take one event like this to cost a user a lot of
>money and/or grief.

I think it's a big advantage to have a permanent archive copy, which is one of
the reasons I use Google Mail.

>The validity of the last paragraph, above, depends upon the answer to
>this question:
>I think that I read in here somewhere that once MMS emails are sent to
>your cell phone, they no longer exist anywhere but inside of your cell
>phone at that point. If true...then if you break or lose your phone
>while it still has unread MMS email messages in it, are those emails
>not then lost forever (whereas the web-based emails would still exist
>on their servers)?

Correct -- they would be lost forever.

>OR do I have the facts wrong, and you have to actually OPEN or DELETE
>the MMS emails on your cell phone before Cingular's copy is deleted.
>Does Cingular's copy disappear as soon as the MMS email is
>successfully RECIEVED by your phone, or does it require action by the
>cell phone owner (opening the MMS email or actively deleting it)
>before Cingular's copy is deleted?

AFAIK, Cingular doesn't keep copies of delivered MMS messages that would be
available to the subscriber (even though it might keep copies for law
enforcement purposes).

--
Best regards, SEE THE FAQ FOR CINGULAR WIRELESS AT
John Navas <http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Cingular_Wireless_FAQ>

You've provided me with the info I need to do what I want...thanks
again, John.
I will check with Cingular's site about the options for disabling MMS,
and then check out Cingular Media and other web-based email sites to
see how they rate on the other points below.

Jerry

On Fri, 12 May 2006 19:34:31 GMT, John Navas
<[email protected]> wrote:

You may not be able to have just MMS disabled -- you might have to
disable all messaging (SMS as well as MMS) -- I don't know for sure.

Spam filtering can help. Google Mail has very good spam filtering.

If you use Google Mail (Gmail) as the mail host, retrieved email can
be automatically archived for indefinite access by Web browser. Don't
know about the other services.

Google Mail doesn't have alerts.
Yahoo Mail does have alerts.
Don't know about others.

[POSTED TO alt.cellular.cingular - REPLY ON USENET PLEASE]

In <[email protected]> on Fri, 12 May 2006 22:38:40 GMT, Jerry
wrote:

>You've provided me with the info I need to do what I want...thanks
>again, John.
>I will check with Cingular's site about the options for disabling MMS,
>and then check out Cingular Media and other web-based email sites to
>see how they rate on the other points below.

Register and login at CingularME.com, and you'll find an array of options for
filtering incoming email-to-SMS.

--
Best regards, SEE THE FAQ FOR CINGULAR WIRELESS AT
John Navas <http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Cingular_Wireless_FAQ>