[fANTOM]

I use Yahoo! Mail for my personal email. I looked to see if they offered POP3 or IMAP and I discovered that POP3 is available only with a "Premium Account" (meaning I would have to pay $19.99 a year for the service). So, I decided that I would setup a Gmail account, since it's totally free. Once I created the account, I went into my Storm's Email Settings to set it up and I noticed an option to select Yahoo! Mail. I decided to try setting it up. I entered my user ID & password and tested it out. Sure enough, it works. I sent a few test emails from my work account and I received them on my phone instantly...

So, if I'm not paying Yahoo! for the "Premium Account" (with POP3), how am I getting my messages?

(BTW...this is my first BlackBerry, so I'm not familiar with how everything works)

[JRSCCivic98]

Prearanged deal between Yahoo and RIM.

[fANTOM]

anyone?

A friend of mine says that it's not true push email...He seems to think that there is an app that scrapes my online inbox and sends the messages to the phone. It doesn't seem that way to me...

[anon(96573)]

lol he answered it for you

[SquirrelNuts]

it's push. I get my mail on my phone before it hits the computer. Loving the Crack... On BT Yahoo BTW..

[JRSCCivic98]

anyone?

A friend of mine says that it's not true push email...He seems to think that there is an app that scrapes my online inbox and sends the messages to the phone. It doesn't seem that way to me...

And he would be correct if his definition of push email is to imply that the corresponding email's email server should be the one responsible of "pushing" the email to the phone. If that's the case, then the only smartphones capable of such a push definition is any phone that supports ActiveSync, and the account in question must be on an ActiveSync capable Exchange server. Then it's true server/handset (A/B) form and fassion.

RIM's push email technology requires the use of an outside server (either BES/BIS) to do the polling and pushing of said email from the corresponding account to your BB. It's still Push.... but in reality it's more like Pull/Push.


BTW, in standard definition, a lot of people call a device Push email capable if the account polling is not done by the handset. Since in the case of a Blackberry, this polling happens on the BES/BIS server and not by the handheld, it's considered push.

[SquirrelNuts]

Who cares how it's done? It works. That's all I care about.

[napsfan]

So, if I use Outlook on my PC and have it set up for POP3 access, do I need to set the option to leave messages on my server? When I got my Storm, I indeed changed my Outlook to leave messags on the server and this works fine, but I wasn't sure if that was actually required or not. Sounds like "yes", otherwise it would be possible that my Outlook would sometimes retreive and remove an email message before the BB server would poll and find it. Am I thinking about this right?

[Pete6]

Here's a little pic of BIS in action


This shows that JRSCCivic98 is completey correct. The mail is pushed to the phone but is pulled from the server. The BIS server (for want of a better word) is a piece of RIM developed sofware that is run by all carriers wishng to offer BIS.

The push process to the phone is almost continuous although the carrier has some control over this, as they do on the pull process from the server. This allows them to do load balancing or, as we see it, slowing down of mail delivery to the phone. You should not forget in discussion that the BlackBerry transmission process is highly secure, a feature that other mobile email providers just do not have.

[JRSCCivic98]

Pete, ActiveSync over an SSL connection is just as secure.

[fANTOM]

Thanks! I appreciate you guys taking the time to explain.

[Pete6]

Pete, ActiveSync over an SSL connection is just as secure.

Ahhh. Thanks.