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I've seen a need for something like this so I figured I'd post a little write up for people.
As many of you may(or may not) know BIS is a server that polls your email accounts and then pushes new emails to your Blackberry. BB users who have switched to Android can get this functionality back by using a Gmail account as a pseudo BIS server. Here's how:
To start you need a non-gmail(POP3 enabled) email address that you would like pushed to your android device and a gmail account. You can use your current gmail or create a new one(I recommend a new account for reasons which will be obvious later). I created a new gmail that had the same handle as my hotmail account just (at)gmail instead of (at)hotmail but it really doesn't matter because nobody will ever see the gmail address.
1.) Determine the POP3 settings for your email account. You can usually find these via a quick google or search through your email provider's support section. *Note: this may not be necessary but it's good to know just in case.
2.) Log in to the gmail account that you wish to use as your pseudo BIS.
3.) Go to the settings panel in gmail and select "Accounts and Import". This is where you will setup your gmail server. I'll be focusing on the "Send mail as:" and "Check mail using POP3:" but if you have contacts in your non-gmail account that you want to pull over you can do that now using the "Import mail and contacts:" function.
4.) First, let's setup the "Check mail using POP3:" function. Input your email address and gmail should figure out all the settings but if it can't you need to manually input the settings you found in Step 1(or did you skip that one cause you were to excited?
). Then go through and select your options for leaving mail on the server, etc. I recommend LEAVING a copy on the server, LABELING incoming the name of your non-gmail account, and NOT ARCHIVING. SSL is a case by case thing depending on your non-gmail provider's settings.
5.) Select add the account and gmail will start pulling over ALL your emails on the other server(this is one reason why I made a new gmail account). You should now be prompted to setup a new "From" address.
6.) Now you've gotta set things up so that your mail will still be received by others with the "From" address showing your non-gmail address. You should have been prompted to do this at the end of Step 5 but if not you can still change your "From" address under "Settings">"Accounts and Import">"Send mail as:". Select "Send mail from another address" and enter your name and non-gmail email address.
7.) Now you must select whether your mail will be sent through gmail's server or your non-gmail's server. I prefer the non-gmail server option but it's a more advanced setup. If you don't care select the gmail server and skip to Step 9.
8.) As I mentioned I prefer that my mail was sent through the non-gmail server. If you do as well then select this option and gmail should populate the SMTP settings for your server. If it doesn't you'll need to find the settings via googling or through your non-gmail's support page. Gmail will test the settings and verify that everything is functioning.
9.) Almost done. After Step 8(or 7) you should be back at the "Accounts and Import" page in settings. If not, get yourself back there. You should now see your non-gmail account setup under the "Send mail as:" and "Check mail using POP3" sections. The last thing to do is set your non-gmail address as the default sending address by clicking "make default" next to the non-gmail address. And finally, as a sort of fail-safe, I checked the "Reply from the same address the message was sent to" box under "When receiving a message:"
*Note: If you did not create a gmail account dedicated to just your non-gmail mail DO NOT make your non-gmail the default sending address. Instead you'll have to rely on the "Reply from same address..." option which means that you WILL NOT be able to COMPOSE emails from your non-gmail address in your Android's gmail app. You can reply but not compose a new message. New messages will be sent from the "default" address on the gmail account. (Make sense? This is reason number 2 why I made a new account)
And we're done!!! I'd recommend you send/receive a few test emails to verify all your setting. From my experience gmail polls other accounts in much the same way BIS does. It defaults to polling at a longer interval(not sure on the number but I think it's like 15 or 20 minutes) but will check more frequently(about every 3 mins in my experience) after it finds a new email until it quits finding new emails. So this means that worst case scenario you will get an email 15-20 minutes after it arrives but if you are in an "email conversation" with someone it will poll much quicker. So there you go. Non-Gmail push email on you Android device! You'll get better battery life, a better "on-device" email experience, and in most cases you'll get your email quicker vs. timed polling in the "email" app on the device.
*****This is just an informational write up. I take no responsibility for lost or damaged data/emails*****11-16-09 08:50 PM
