[Delil]

Ever since the Z10 got introduced I've been reading some complaints about SMTP errors and not being able to send mails in general.
This issue got the label "bug" from day one. But I actually wanted to explain how it isn't a bug and it's how SMTP is supposed to work.
It has to do with bad configuration and mostly lack of knowledge by the user.

First of all let me explain to you what the SMTP server is:
Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP) is an Internet standard for electronic mail (e-mail) transmission across Internet Protocol (IP) networks. So it basically allows you to send mail over the internet.

Everybody can setup a mailserver (POP & SMTP) but in these days that isn't really necessary. When you subscribe for an internet connection at home or even mobile you get free mailboxes and a number of aliases per mailbox which is managed at your ISP's side. They allready have a POP and SMTP server in place so you don't have to worry about that. They provide you the necessary credentials and passwords and you're set.
info :
Standard port for POP 110
Standar port for SMTP 25 (this port is important in the rest of the story).

Internet got more popular late 90's and everybody could get a mailbox easily. This also meant the upcoming of something called "SPAM". What happened is that these spammers used the SMTP-server and network of their providers to sent out their emails in bulk. And since the STMP server with most providers didn't require any authentication they could easily connect to a different network and still acces the SMTP - server of their own provider and send mails etc.

To have more control providers worldwide are now blocking port 25. This means when you configure your laptop at home with POP and SMTP-settings of your provider and then connect to for example to a wifi network at school which connects to another provider, whenever you try to send mail you get an error that you cant connect to the SMTP-server. Why? Because you're trying to send mail over port 25 which is blocked to go outside the providers network so you can never reach your own providers SMTP-server to send your mail. You can only reach the one of the network and that's only if yuo have it configured. A way around this is each time you change networks to change the SMTP-server in your mailsettings to the SMTP-server of the network your on.

But I can imagine that each time your phone connects to a different network, wifi at home, wifi at work, mobile provider, free wifi at starbucks, ... it's going to be a hassle changing your SMTP settings all the time. (For laptop users check Mozilla Thunderbird, you can configure multiple SMTP servers and choose which one to use as default depending on which network you are).
So for mobile users there is a solution (also applicable for a laptopuser, but for some reasons people need to send stuff over a certain SMTP-server so the Thunderbird option is the way to go ). Mobile and internet service providers now offer their clients to acces their SMTP servers with TSL authentication. By using a different port than the standard 25 so you can connect to it instead of getting blocked by the network your on. But you need a username and password to access it. (normally they are the same as for your incoming mail)

So on my Z10 I configured my ISP's SMTP-server with StartTLS configuration and my provider has their SMTP server accesible from the outside on port 587. This means whatever network I'm on, my phone will send my mails through the SMTP-server of my ISP by connecting over another port than the default 25. And the cool thing is my sent mails get stored on the sent folder of my ISP's mailbox.

So I advice everybody to go on their mobile provider's or ISP's site and see if they have mail configuration settings for mobile phones. 90% of the SMTP complaints will solve themselves with this.

Thx for reading

[zocster]

Thank you for taking time to write that.

[Delil]

You're welcome. Anytime.

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