Email tweaking

[gzen1]

Noob here. Switching from BB 8530 (Aries) to Droid 2 (in the mail). Being a BB user, I have concerns regarding the setup of email on my new Droid 2. I currently love the way BB allows me to select whether I want to just delete an email from the phone or from both the phone and inbox (Gmail). I use Gmail as my primary email just to let you know. I like being able to select to have the message deleted from the phone only so that when I boot up my computer (Mac) and launch MacMail, the emails that I want will be downloaded to my MacMail so I can have an offline copy to use as I please.

I have searched the forums and stickies extensively and have not found my particular issue covered. Currently, I have both POP and IMAP enabled on my Gmail account and everything works flawlessly. But, I'm wondering how I can accomplish my goal of being able to still download emails to MacMail that I have already opened from my droid phone (presumably using the Gmail app).

I assume (yes, I know that's dangerous) that the Gmail app uses IMAP. So, what I'm thinking is that I could use the Gmail app to view my email on my phone and if I decide that a particular email is something I will want to have MacMail download on my laptop later then, when finished reading the email on my droid phone via Gmail app, I could simply mark the email as "unread" from the Gmail app. Then, since my account in MacMail is set up as a POP account, MacMail will then download the messages that I read on my phone and then marked as "unread." It seems plausible since I have both POP and IMAP enabled within Gmail.

So, my question is: will this work? I realize the experience will not be exactly the same as on my BB, but I wouldn't mind if all I had to do was mark the email as unread once I've read it on my droid phone.

Bottom line: I need a solution that will allow me to view messages on my droid phone and also be able to download them later to my laptop via MacMail. Having all my messages resting in the cloud is simply not an option for me. I need to be able to access old/saved messages (and their attachments) even when I don't have access to a wifi or cell connection.

Thanks in advance for any advice on this. If my proposed solution will not work, please let me know of any other solutions.

Glad to be a member of the droid community.

 

[ardoreal]

Heh, friend, Gmail is perhaps one of the things your Droid 2 will do best.

Your read/unread emails sync back to gmail, but there's more. You can star emails, move them between folders, search your entire gmail history, and all those changes happen in realtime. In short, the Gmail client on Android 2.2 is as close to fully featured as you can get.

Email may happen best on a Blackberry, but Gmail is by far the best on Android. By a mile, so to speak.

/edit
With regards to your offline question, one option is to keep the mail labelled with your inbox label or folder if you will, as by default the last 4 days sync to the inbox.

Sent from my DROIDX using Tapatalk

 

[takeshi]

But, I'm wondering how I can accomplish my goal of being able to still download emails to MacMail that I have already opened from my droid phone (presumably using the Gmail app).

Nothing to worry about there.

The real issue is being able to delete on the phone but not from your gmail account. You should be able to do this if you set up your gmail account on your device with POP access (which has its own drawbacks). I don't know of a way off the top of my head to do this with the gmail app.

I assume (yes, I know that's dangerous) that the Gmail app uses IMAP. So, what I'm thinking is that I could use the Gmail app to view my email on my phone and if I decide that a particular email is something I will want to have MacMail download on my laptop later then, when finished reading the email on my droid phone via Gmail app, I could simply mark the email as "unread" from the Gmail app. Then, since my account in MacMail is set up as a POP account, MacMail will then download the messages that I read on my phone and then marked as "unread." It seems plausible since I have both POP and IMAP enabled within Gmail.

Read/unread status shouldn't matter. POP clients should download whatever mail the POP client doesn't have that exists on the server. Has your experience been otherwise?

Email may happen best on a Blackberry

People keep saying that but I definitely prefer Exchange and ActiveSync on the Droid over Exchange and BES on the BB. That seems to be just one of those phrases that people parrot because they read it somewhere...

BIS is helpful if you still use old POP accounts but there's really little advantage to the BB's email handling. It doesn't do IMAP very well from what I recall.

 

[gzen1]

Read/unread status shouldn't matter. POP clients should download whatever mail the POP client doesn't have that exists on the server. Has your experience been otherwise?

Thanks for the replies. I didn't realize that my POP client would download messages even if they were previously read. I thought the POP client would only download unread messages. If what you say is accurate, then I think I should be good to go. I'll just use the Gmail app (IMAP) on the phone, and continue to leave my MacMail set up as POP for download of all messages to my computer. This could work out very well. Use Gmail for "realtime" changes from the phone, and then use MacMail to download the end result. Perfect. And, since I already have the option checked in Gmail to automatically delete messages once retrieved via POP, I shouldn't have to go back into Gmail to erase messages after accessed by POP. So, for the most part, it should work out pretty close to how it works now with my BB.

Once I get the phone and test it out, I'll post my results for others' reference for solving this issue. Hopefully it will help out another previous BB user.

 

[gzen1]

Update: 9-18-10

Alright, phone arrived yesterday. And I'm happy to say that email is working just as I planned on. So, I have email functionality that is damn near the same as what I had on my BB.

I'd like to add as well that I am very impressed with this phone so far. Being a previous iPhone and BB user, I think Android was an excellent choice. The iPhone and BB both have their pros and cons, as does Android. My personal opinion though is Android blows BB out of the water. When I switched from iPhone to BB (due to cell coverage issues...I wont name names), It didn't take long for me to start missing the iPhone. Would have kept iPhone it if it hadn't been for the network. So, android provides the experience that I missed from iPhone but with a more desirable network. Happy I made the switch.

On the downside, I have already found what I think is a glitch (at least I hope it wasn't designed this way on purpose). I can't get all of the haptic feedback to turn off. I have haptic feedback turned off, yet still the phone vibrates when I use certain buttons (like the back and home button). It really only seems to happen with the buttons at the bottom of the phone (not sure what to call them, buttons that don't push in). Think it still vibrates during boot as well and also when holding finger on the screen to delete an app. That's pretty annoying, feel like I'm playing a game of Operation on my phone and keep getting buzzed. I have discovered, however, that if you slide the physical keyboard out (talking Droid 2 here) and use the back button on it, then the vibration does not happen. So, I guess that will be the temporary fix until this problem is resolved with an update (hopefully).

Overall though, I'm very happy with the phone. Especially since my Email process carried over without a hitch.