Getting SBCGlobal email to work as it did on my WM6 device

[bluenoise]

I'm a new iPhone 3G user and I'm trying to get it set up to my liking. Previously, I used a Moto Q9h with Windows Mobile 6. My problem is getting the email set up to behave as it did with my Moto. Here's what I want to have happen:

1. When I view my sbcglobal.net email on my computer, I use the Yahoo "web 2.0" mail webapp and it works great. If I read, delete, or file a message there, the phone's email client is automatically updated to reflect this. It's not "push" but the regularly-scheduled fetch makes the message on the phone either look "read," filed in a folder, or gone (deleted). Likewise, reading or deleting a message on the phone causes a similar update on the web view. The phone also sees all the subfolders in my in-box. They behave as two clients viewing the same collection of email messages.

2. On my iPhone, updating the status of a message on the server has no effect on the iPhone's in-box. If I delete a message from my web client, it's still sitting in my iPhone's in-box as unread. I have to delete it there separately. It's doing exactly the thing that makes me not use stand-alone email applications on my computer.

A bit of Googling tells me I might get what I'm seeking by using IMAP instead of POP to read my mail. I 'stole' the settings from my Moto and modified my account settings in my iPhone to match, but now it's more jacked up. The iPhone shows I have five unread messages, but the in-box appears empty.

I assume it is capable to doing anything my crappy Moto could do, so what's the trick for getting it to work as I want?

Thanks!

 

[operator207]

Yes, IMAP is what your looking for.
I have a separate email address for my iPhone (1st version, 1.1.3 firmware).
I just used webmail to check email for that account. The iPhone had 8 emails total, and I delete 3 of them via webmail. They were showing in the iPhone and obviously showing in webmail. I deleted the 3 emails, then logged out of webmail. (the logging out may be what actually deleted the emails, not sure how the webmail actually deletes email, in realtime or when you logout) I then went to my iPhone, opened email, and it started to refresh. The 3 emails I deleted in webmail went away.

If your wondering, I have my main account, and everything goes to that. I check it via an SSH tunnel from my laptop to the server with an IMAP client (Mutt and recently Thunderbird) This is for security purposes. Not that I get emails that are that important, but I am constantly on open networks, or nonsecure networks, and do not want someone reading my emails. (SSL and TLS is sometimes blocked at some of the locations I visit. No clue why though.) However, I want to get emails from my wife telling me to pick up the kids on my iPhone. So on the server, I have filters setup to forward emails from certain people to my iPhone. The iPhone is the only thing that checks that email address.

I have my iPhone setup for a standard IMAP account, nothing special. Its essentially the default setup for IMAP as far as I know. Checks every 15 minutes.

I hope this helps some. I do control my IMAP server, and there is the possibility IDLE is not setup on SBC's IMAP server.

You can check by opening terminal.app (HDD/Applications/Utilities/Terminal.app) or if on windows: Start -> run -> type cmd, hit enter:

Type (on either): telnet imap.server.address 143 (hit enter)
If you can do this it should give you something like this:

>telnet mail.server.net 143
Trying xxx.xxx.xx.xxx...
Connected to mail.server.net.
Escape character is '^]'.
* OK [CAPABILITY IMAP4rev1 UIDPLUS CHILDREN NAMESPACE THREAD=ORDEREDSUBJECT THREAD=REFERENCES SORT QUOTA IDLE IMAP_ENHANCEDIDLE AUTH=PLAIN AUTH=LOGIN AUTH=CRAM-SHA1 AUTH=CRAM-SHA256 ACL ACL2=UNION STARTTLS] Courier-IMAP ready. Copyright 1998-2005 Double Precision, Inc.  See COPYING for distribution information.

Check for IDLE, this is the only piece I can think of that, if not present, would make IMAP a glorified POP.

 

[bluenoise]

I got it working. I told it to set up a Yahoo account and then I adjusted some of the settings from there. I thought I had already tried that, but apparently I messed it up. It's working perfectly now.