No IMAP Support? Please help.

Yesterday I became an AT&T customer and bought a Bold.

I really love the phone, but sadly, I'm having one major issue with it. I cannot get IMAP to work properly. I have two IMAP accounts; one is Gmail, the other is a private account with my web hosting company.

I've set them both up properly (as IMAP, not pop3). I've followed instructions on Google's site carefully. I've searched the web and these forums and found hundreds of posts describing this exact problem, yet not a SINGLE answer.

The problem is this, to reiterate: IMAP is busted. When i receive an email on an IMAP account, it gets pushed to my BB. That's great. If I read it or delete it on my BB, it is adjusted properly on the server. However, if I read or delete that email on the server (via webmail or any other IMAP-functional application), it remains unaffected on the BB. Yes, I have checked all of the "reconcilliation" settings. "Delete reconcilliation", et al. That checkbox is absolutely worthless... I thought at first it was possibly just Gmail's questionable IMAP implementation, but my webhost's IMAP server is functioning the same way, so this is too much.

I've installed the Gmail app from Google, and while it looks nice, there is some extreme delay in updating the mailbox (like 20+ minutes), and by itself, it does not provide the built-in email notification icon at the top of the screen like the BIS email app does. Further compounding this issue is if I go into the Gmail app, and delete the new email, the email again REMAINS in the standard BB email folder for that account. In other words, still no IMAP deletion sync.

Bottom line is, it would appear that deletion (and read) synchronization with IMAP is one-way only: from BB to Server; but never from Server to BB.

What I need to know is this:


1) Is there a way to make it work?
2) If not, will this be made to function properly within the next month?


If the answer is no, then what option do I have but to return the phone and get a properly designed one? I don't understand how the supposedly top phone for email cannot do something so simple as proper IMAP syncronization. A LOT of people use IMAP now who aren't corporate/exchange users.


Any help/insights in this regard would be greatly appreciated.

The delete from the server will eventually get back to the handset--mine can take an hour or two at times. The read indicator does not get back to my handset. I guess that's just the way BIS/IMAP is.

I am struggling to understand. Can't you simply delete them from your device? :confused:

Posted from my CrackBerry at wapforums.crackberry.com

Originally Posted by exelant

I am struggling to understand. Can't you simply delete them from your device? :confused:

Posted from my CrackBerry at wapforums.crackberry.com

Well, the point is, I need my IMAP accounts and their inbox folders to be synchronized. I use several machines, including the phone, and I want them to all have the same inboxes, per account. Deleting them all once on the pc/laptop and again on the BB is a lot of time wasted when you get a ton of emails over the course of a day.

I'm having trouble wrapping my head around how such a basic feature (functional IMAP) can be missing on Blackberries, when the iPhone, whose email is supposedly inferior, does IMAP properly (with bi-directional deletion), and with Gmail, to boot.

Is it possible to interface with an IMAP server the "normal" way, directly? As in, no push, but just an actual BB application that will connect to an IMAP server, show the folders, the emails, etc. Just like any normal email application that supports IMAP. Perhaps, ideally, it would even poll the server on a timed interval like another phone I'm thinking of.

Does such an app exist? This BIS/push concept is a bit too limited for me in terms of IMAP support, I think.

I have not seen any. Email with full IMAP was much better on my PPC with FlexMail4. The battery life on the BlackBerry is the main reason I live with the limitation on BIS email. You could look into a hosted Exchange / BES package to gain a lot more capability.

Posted from my CrackBerry at wapforums.crackberry.com

I installed LogicMail on my blackberry which can setup multiple accounts and is full imap.

You can browse your folders and stuff...
yet it can be a little slower but I just use it when i need to go back into one of my folders and look at something.

you can download it here
It also supports SSL

LogicMail for BlackBerry – Trac

I agree real IMAP support should be on all Blackberries. Seems like a win win for RIM. Less Blackberry users using BIS would mean less demand on their servers. Seems with the ever increasing level of hardware power on mobile devices and fast 3g networks the value of RIMs "Push" email service is alot less than it was 5years ago.