Is IMAP considered Push?

[jjsun]

Just picked up my new iPhone, and I have two email addresses set up on my phone. One is my sbcglobal (thru yahoo) account and another is my university's .edu account.

So far, the sbcglobal account is consistently pushing messages to the phone, but the .edu account does not.

I set the .edu account up as an IMAP, but I only receive messages when I refresh it on the phone. To my knowledge, everything should be pushed directly to the phone, but is there something else I should be doing?

 

[Tankgunk]

The iPhone supports IMAP, but it does not support IDLE. IMAP is not push without IDLE. However, IMAP is still better than POP because you will still be able to have the same email show up in the same way no matter what you access it from (if you read an email on your computer it shows up read on your iPhone). I've had better experience with Mail.app supporting IDLE, but it's buggy and I occasionally don't get the push email I'd like.

 

[jjsun]

Sorry, but what is IDLE? Also, so even though I set up my account as IMAP, it's considered IDLE?

 

[djwobble]

The iPhone supports IMAP, but it does not support IDLE. IMAP is not push without IDLE. However, IMAP is still better than POP because you will still be able to have the same email show up in the same way no matter what you access it from (if you read an email on your computer it shows up read on your iPhone). I've had better experience with Mail.app supporting IDLE, but it's buggy and I occasionally don't get the push email I'd like.

IMAP also gives the advantage that when you delete the message on the iPhone or webmail, it deletes it from the mail server. For instance, if you get an email and you delete it on your iPhone, it will delete it off of the device and will delete it off of the mail server so that when you open your email client on your Mac / PC, it will "sync" with the mail server and find that message has been deleted and not show it. It will also work the other way around too.

It also saves time on when you sync the iPhone. You do not have to sync your mail folders as they "sync" every time your iPhone checks the mail for you during FETCH.

Help at all?

 

[jjsun]

I just noticed under my "Fetch" settings, it is set as Never. Maybe I should change it, and that way I won't have to always manually check my messages.

 

[pintnight]

Some IMAP server supports IDLE. One way to test to see if your IMAP server support IDLE is to run a command line prompt and do the following (what you see in bold is what you need to type):

telnet server.com 143
Trying xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx...
Connected to server.com.
Escape character is '^]'.
* OK [CAPABILITY IMAP4 IMAP4rev1 LITERAL+ ID STARTTLS AUTH=PLAIN AUTH=LOGIN SASL-IR] server.com Cyrus IMAP4 v2.3.8 server ready
. login userr@server.com password
. OK [CAPABILITY IMAP4 IMAP4rev1 LITERAL+ ID LOGINDISABLED ACL RIGHTS=kxte QUOTA MAILBOX-REFERRALS NAMESPACE UIDPLUS NO_ATOMIC_RENAME UNSELECT CHILDREN MULTIAPPEND BINARY SORT SORT=MODSEQ THREAD=ORDEREDSUBJECT THREAD=REFERENCES ANNOTATEMORE CATENATE CONDSTORE IDLE LISTEXT LIST-SUBSCRIBED X-NETSCAPE URLAUTH] User logged in

If you don't see a CAPABILITY response from the server then do this in telnet:

. CAPABILITY
* CAPABILITY IMAP4 IMAP4rev1 LITERAL+ ID LOGINDISABLED ACL RIGHTS=kxte QUOTA MAILBOX-REFERRALS NAMESPACE UIDPLUS NO_ATOMIC_RENAME UNSELECT CHILDREN MULTIAPPEND BINARY SORT SORT=MODSEQ THREAD=ORDEREDSUBJECT THREAD=REFERENCES ANNOTATEMORE CATENATE CONDSTORE IDLE LISTEXT LIST-SUBSCRIBED X-NETSCAPE URLAUTH
. OK Completed

If you do see IDLE in the response from the server, then the IMAP server can do a PUSH to the client. What IDLE does is send a command to the client whenever something happen to the folder (in the iPhone's case INBOX folder).

NOTE: This is for only on a non-ssl port, if your server only support SSL connections, you won't be able to do the steps above.

 

[Tankgunk]

Sorry, but what is IDLE? Also, so even though I set up my account as IMAP, it's considered IDLE?

IDLE is a feature of IMAP that isn't supported by all IMAP servers and clients. Basically IDLE is just a way for the IMAP server to instantly notify the client when a new email arrives, to which the client responds to by checking your email.

Also, although the iPhone appears to support IDLE, it does not (link).

 

[pintnight]

IDLE is a feature of IMAP that isn't supported by all IMAP servers and clients. Basically IDLE is just a way for the IMAP server to instantly notify the client when a new email arrives, to which the client responds to by checking your email.

Also, although the iPhone appears to support IDLE, it does not (link).

Interesting! Kinda fooled the people with the IMAP push when it's not using the actual IMAP IDLE support.

 

[operator207]

Some IMAP server supports IDLE. One way to test to see if your IMAP server support IDLE is to run a command line prompt and do the following (what you see in bold is what you need to type):

If you don't see a CAPABILITY response from the server then do this in telnet:

If you do see IDLE in the response from the server, then the IMAP server can do a PUSH to the client. What IDLE does is send a command to the client whenever something happen to the folder (in the iPhone's case INBOX folder).

NOTE: This is for only on a non-ssl port, if your server only support SSL connections, you won't be able to do the steps above.

If your trying to find information from a Courier server, you can use these commands but preface them with "zz". Such as "zz login user pass" and "zz capability". Though Courier in its default settings will dump the capability settings at initial connection, I believe you can hide some settings it advertises until after you have authenticated. I vaguely remember finding a way to do this in Courier, but did not need it, and have forgotten where I saw it.

 

[anks329]

so, is it possible to set up an account to use imap-idle on the iphone if the mail server supports it?

 

[jl-applefanatic]

Just picked up my new iPhone, and I have two email addresses set up on my phone. One is my sbcglobal (thru yahoo) account and another is my university's .edu account.

So far, the sbcglobal account is consistently pushing messages to the phone, but the .edu account does not.

I set the .edu account up as an IMAP, but I only receive messages when I refresh it on the phone. To my knowledge, everything should be pushed directly to the phone, but is there something else I should be doing?

jjsun,

I use SBCGlobal too, but the email isn't pushed to my iphone, like the way it does with a Blackberry. Instead, it fetches the mail 15 minutes later. How did you set it up so that it receives the email automatically on your iphone?

 

[iFerd]

I just noticed under my "Fetch" settings, it is set as Never. Maybe I should change it, and that way I won't have to always manually check my messages.

My recollection is that the default is Never, and yes, setting to some finite value will solve your problem with needing to update manually.

 

[operator207]

so, is it possible to set up an account to use imap-idle on the iphone if the mail server supports it?

No the iPhone does not support IDLE, at least in the 1.x.x firmware.

http://blogs.sun.com/chienr/entry/iphone_and_imap_idle_part