Hi all,

I was wondering if someone could please clarify how imap idle,
blackberry and other systems for push email actually work – hoping I’m
not off topic.

I installed profimail (http://www.lonelycatgames.com/?app=profimail),
an email client which supports imap idle, on my Nokia E71, locked on
the 3 UK (www.three.co.uk) network.
Profimail and imap idle work fine: emails sent to my mailbox (imap
server) arrive on the phone immediately.

However, when I tried Nokia email (email.nokia.com) and ‘email on
3’ (the customized version of Seven’s push email, www.seven.com),
emails were delivered to m phone with considerable delay, sometimes
half a day. Do you have any idea why? The same happened when I
connected Nokia email to a wifi network, rather than to 3’s own
network. Receiving an email 6 hours after it was sent isn't exactly a
'push' solution! is there anything I could do?

My guess is that, while profimail maintains a constant connection to
the server, which drains the battery, Nokia email and Seven send some
sort of ‘hidden’ sms to my mobile, prompting it to connect to the
server only when needed. This saves battery life but at the same time
is a bottleneck: in my case, the sms must be delayed for some reason I
fail to understand.

Do you think my interpretation is correct? Is there anything I could
do? Out of curiosity, do Blackberry works with this ‘hidden sms’
method, too, or do they use an imap idle connection to the mail
server?

Thanks!


› See More: Clarifications on push email (and why it doesn't work properly on theThree network)