Email on Samsung Captivate, first thoughts

[Kyle_S]

I picked up a Samsung captivate yesterday at BB, mostly because they decided to honor the online Dell price of $159.

Never having had an android phone, there are really only two things that surprised me. The minor one, there is no sensible way of killing apps without downloading something (yes, I downloaded ATK).

The major one? Samsung installed their own mail app, that doesn't appear to support push, only polling. This completely boggles my mind.

It is slightly nicer than the stock Google app (which thankfully is still installed), because there's a horizontal scroll bar at the top, to scroll through your tags or folders. In every other way, it's sub-par.

The samsung mail-app is also permanently welded to the little dock, so I can't pull it out and put the stock Google one in there instead.

I can only hope a hack comes out to swap the mail app in the dock. Samsung may actually fix their mail app too, but I want to customize what's where on my phone!

--Kyle

 

[Joeybear23]

I am using the stock Mail app with both my exchange and gmail accounts.
The Exchange account gave the option for push, but the gmail account did not. I wonder if it depends on the account type.

However, I get emails from either instantaneously, wich tells me it must be push. In fact my exchange account hits my phone before it hits Outlook on my laptop.

 

[dewhite04]

You can change the apps in the dock - change the app view type to "customizable grid", then hit menu and choose "edit". Now you can drag any app into the tray and replace what you see there. Once you're done with this you can change back to whichever App view type you like best...

 

[dewhite04]

Also - you might search the market for K-9 Mail. It is MUCH more configurable, although a little spartan looking for my taste...

 

[alphadog]

If you go to settings -> "accounts and sync" you can see and set google sync settings.

If you setup gmail and use the gmail widget - don't set gmail up as pop - then you get sync turned on as push by default. Exchange also does real PUSH sync, not a timed Poll interval. My Exchange emails come in faster then my outlook client sees them. PUSH works great.

 

[Kyle_S]

Thanks for the tips. They helped a ton.

For the life of me, I can't get it to connect to my work-mail as Exchange (even though I can use the exchange-web-mail from the browser), so it's setup as IMAP. Not so bad, as it's never used for urgent mail, but still, less than desirable.

Maybe I'll try setting up gmail again in the samsung app.

When I tried setting up Gmail (as a google account) in the Samsung app, I got notifications of new mail 20 minutes or so after they appeared on the web. The google-gmail widget however is working flawlessly for me.

 

[alphadog]

Thanks for the tips. They helped a ton.

For the life of me, I can't get it to connect to my work-mail as Exchange (even though I can use the exchange-web-mail from the browser), so it's setup as IMAP. Not so bad, as it's never used for urgent mail, but still, less than desirable.

Do you know if your admin has allowed true PUSH sync with Exchange? It is possible to have exchange behave as POP3 or IMAP and not support PUSH, or only allow pre-provisioned devices.

Also, if your Exchange server has a self-signed certificate, you need to check the options to allow all certs at the bottom of the setup screen.

 

[scorpiodsu]

Is there anything that can be done to get yahoo mail pushed? I am using k-9 now and the stock email doesn't do yahoo over wifi. I just don't understand how google can have a client that doesn't support yahoo POP accounts.

 

[alphadog]

Is your Yahoo account a paid account? if not then you only get POP over ATT cell network due their agreement with Yahoo. When you go over WiFi - yahoo doesn't know you are using an ATT phone, so they won't let you do POP unless you pay for it.

If you are any other carrier, you can't do POP at all without paying for it. I ran into this with other ATT phones - it works fine via 3G/Edge

 

[scorpiodsu]

Is your Yahoo account a paid account? if not then you only get POP over ATT cell network due their agreement with Yahoo. When you go over WiFi - yahoo doesn't know you are using an ATT phone, so they won't let you do POP unless you pay for it.

If you are any other carrier, you can't do POP at all without paying for it. I ran into this with other ATT phones - it works fine via 3G/Edge

Yeah I know and that's dumb. When I am at home, I have wifi and I'm doing facebook, app market, chatting, rss and email. So it's an inconvenience to have to switch wifi on and off for yahoo mail. So I use k-9 instead of stock because it gets yahoo over wifi.

Anyhow, I would like to know if anyone that is using k-9 is getting yahoo mail timely or do you have to refresh? It's even inconsistent with gmail. Polling sucks too. Takes too long and drains too much battery.

 

[cobra302]

does anyone know how to move emails into folders on the captivate? i see the folders listed up top, but i cant move an email into one.

 

[scorpiodsu]

does anyone know how to move emails into folders on the captivate? i see the folders listed up top, but i cant move an email into one.

If you're using the gmail stock app if you long press the email and select "change label" you can move it to another folder.

 

[cobra302]

ok, i havent tried the stock gmail yet, how about on the regular email?

 

[scorpiodsu]

ok, i havent tried the stock gmail yet, how about on the regular email?

Not sure because I don't use it. It may or may not be possible. It's a shame of how basic email features are missing across iPhone, blackberry and google platforms. Each one had their own flaws. I know these are powerful phones but people do still want to be able to manage their email. Is that too much to ask?

 

[simulator]

ok, i havent tried the stock gmail yet, how about on the regular email?

Not possible. ****ty Samsung ui on 2.1. You can do this on HTC 2.1. Hopefully it will be addressed in 2.2

 

[Kyle_S]

Since this thread has already been so helpful, maybe I'll get lucky again.

In the contacts if you swipe right it calls, left it starts composing an SMS. Is there a way to change that to swipe left to email instead?

This forum is great!

 

[JackImageX]

(Ok, I am coming from an iPhone so take that into consideration)

I think the Exchange support with the Samsung app is pretty good. Not perfect (if you wanted the best Exchange support with sync and handling rules, you probably should have chose a Blackberry and pay for a BES license) but it does the job.

One of the features I liked was for Exchange accounts, it lets you set specific times that you do your Sync. You can actually tell it after hours or on certain days, don't get my mail or only get it once an hour (great if you are trying to unplug from work on the weekend). That's a very nice feature. It also looks like you can do a separate sound notification for the different e-mail accounts you have in the app. That's pretty nice also.

The iPhone gives you all of the great options of... oh wait, it doesn't give you any options.