Apple

not sure why im asking this but whats wrong with the gmail now setup on probably everyone's iphone?

Yea, saw this on tuaw or something.. Apparently IMAP is better than POP3... I have no idea why. I might do a little research on the topic... I'm sure a wikipedia search on IMAP and POP3 will answer my questions.

So what does this do? lol

From Wikipedia.org - Internet Message Access Protocol (IMAP):

Advantages over POP3

Connected and disconnected modes of operation

When using POP3, clients typically connect to the e-mail server briefly, only as long as it takes to download new messages. When using IMAP4, clients often stay connected as long as the user interface is active and download message content on demand. For users with many or large messages, this IMAP4 usage pattern can result in faster response times.

Multiple clients simultaneously connected to the same mailbox

The POP3 protocol requires the currently connected client to be the only client connected to the mailbox. In contrast, the IMAP protocol specifically allows simultaneous access by multiple clients and provides mechanisms for clients to detect changes made to the mailbox by other, concurrently connected, clients.

Access to MIME message parts and partial fetch

Nearly all internet e-mail is transmitted in MIME format, allowing messages to have a tree structure where the leaf nodes are any of a variety of single part content types and the non-leaf nodes are any of a variety of multipart types. The IMAP4 protocol allows clients to separately retrieve any of the individual MIME parts and also to retrieve portions of either individual parts or the entire message. These mechanisms allow clients to retrieve the text portion of a message without retrieving attached files or to stream content as it is being fetched.

Message state information

Through the use of flags defined in the IMAP4 protocol clients can keep track of message state, for example whether or not the message has been read, replied to, or deleted. These flags are stored on the server, so different clients accessing the same mailbox at different times can detect state changes made by other clients. POP3 provides no mechanism for clients to store such state information on the server so if a single user accesses a mailbox with two different POP3 clients state information, such as whether a message has been accessed, cannot be synchronized between the clients. The IMAP4 protocol supports both pre-defined system flags and client defined keywords, System flags indicate state information such as whether a message has been read. Keywords, which are not supported by all IMAP servers, allow messages to be given one or more tags whose meaning is up to the client. Adding user created tags to messages is an operation supported by some Webmail services, such as Gmail, although generally not using IMAP.
Multiple mailboxes on the server

IMAP4 clients can create, rename, and/or delete mailboxes (usually presented to the user as folders) on the server, and move messages between mailboxes. Multiple mailbox support also allows servers to provide access to shared and public folders.

Server-side searches

IMAP4 provides a mechanism for a client to ask the server to search for messages meeting a variety of criteria. This mechanism avoids requiring clients to download every message in the mailbox in order to perform these searches.

Built-in extension mechanism

Reflecting the experience of earlier Internet protocols, IMAP4 defines an explicit mechanism by which it may be extended. Many extensions to the base protocol have been proposed and are in common use. IMAP2bis did not have an extension mechanism, and POP3 now has one defined by RFC 2449.

Disadvantages of IMAP

While IMAP remedies many of the shortcomings of POP, this inherently introduces additional complexity. Much of this complexity (e.g., multiple clients accessing the same mailbox at the same time) is compensated for by server-side workarounds such as maildir or database backends.

Unless the mail store and searching algorithms on the server are carefully implemented, a client can potentially consume large amounts of server resources when searching massive mailboxes.

IMAP4 clients need to explicitly request new email message content potentially causing additional delays on slow connections such as those commonly used by mobile devices. A private proposal, push IMAP, would extend IMAP to implement push e-mail by sending the entire message instead of just a notification. However, push IMAP has not been generally accepted and current IETF work has addressed the problem in other ways (see the Lemonade Profile for more information).

Unlike some proprietary protocols which combine sending and retrieval operations, sending a message and saving a copy in a server-side folder with a base-level IMAP client requires transmitting the message content twice, once to SMTP for delivery and a second time to IMAP to store in a sent mail folder. This is remedied by a set of extensions defined by the IETF LEMONADE Working Group for mobile devices: URLAUTH (RFC 4467) and CATENATE (RFC 4469) in IMAP and BURL (RFC 4468) in SMTP-SUBMISSION. POP3 servers don't support server-side folders so clients have no choice but to store sent items on the client. Many IMAP clients can be configured to store sent mail in a client-side folder. In addition to the LEMONADE "trio", Courier Mail Server offers a non-standard method of sending using IMAP by copying an outgoing message to a dedicated outbox folder.

I too wonder what the difference is.
I couldn't get IMAP to work...

EDIT: Thanks unclear.
It turns out that POP3 works just fine for me needs. =D

i did it :]
now i can see all my folders and categories in my gmail and when it uploaded the mail for the first time, i didnt get 500000000 unread messages, so i guess when u read a message on ur phone, it marks it as read in gmail from the computer

If you check emails in a client on your mac/pc, and also on the iphone, this is for you!

It means that items you read but don't delete in one client, it will show the same in all. If you delete it, the other clients will show it in the trash.

If you want to view a message, it first downloads all headers, then the body of your message, finally downloading attachments if and when you want them. So you can read your emails without attachments - handy on an iPhone.

Unfortunately it does not appear as an option in my gmail, but I'm hoping they will add this.

Originally Posted by Dash-2

Thanks unclear.
It turns out that POP3 works just fine for me needs. =D

NP,QT.

Imap didnt work for me either. Something to do with SSL?

It's kinda strange...

As they describe in their manual you first have to "Enable IMAP in your Gmail account settings"

But this is not possible for me. If I navigate to the settings on gmail.com I can only see the "Forwarding and POP" possibility and not "Forwarding and POP/IMAP" as they tell us in this manual:

http://mail.google.com/support/bin/a...y?answer=77695

I'm using a german gmail account. Is this working for anybody else?

Originally Posted by simonsturzenegger

It's kinda strange...

As they describe in their manual you first have to "Enable IMAP in your Gmail account settings"

But this is not possible for me. If I navigate to the settings on gmail.com I can only see the "Forwarding and POP" possibility and not "Forwarding and POP/IMAP" as they tell us in this manual:

http://mail.google.com/support/bin/a...y?answer=77695

I'm using a german gmail account. Is this working for anybody else?

Mine is also showing only "Forwarding and POP," i suspect they are gradually rolling it out and if its not working within a week, id send them an email

Mine is also showing only "Forwarding and POP," i suspect they are gradually rolling it out and if its not working within a week, id send them an email

Yes, you're right. Just read this on a couple of websites:

Google's Gmail has just integrated IMAP. However, its only appearing in a select accounts.

Yea, It didn't work. After setting it up, I get the message:

Cannot Get Mail
IMAP is not available for your account. (Failure)

EDIT: and in the settings under my account in mail.google.com also only show "Forwarding and POP" and not "Fowarding and POP/IMAP"

IF you're going to do this, check that first. If your account doesn't say IMAP, don't bother doing this yet. It won't work. As some of the above users wrote, it apparently hasn't received a full roll out yet.

just FYI, it is definately a partial rollout

i just checked and i have it enabled on one of my gmail email addresses but not the other

It's working for my account and is great on my iPhone. I hated having to delete messages two times, once on my iPhone and again on my Macbook. It's also much nicer being able to have my Gmail folders show up now.

It looks like the older Gmail accounts are the first ones to use IMAP with
Hope it's coming to mine as well soon...

Originally Posted by simonsturzenegger

It looks like the older Gmail accounts are the first ones to use IMAP with
Hope it's coming to mine as well soon...

That isn't true. I got Gmail when it first started and enabled POP when they first offered it and I still don't have IMAP access.. Oh well... We are just going to have to wait until Google stock reaches $700.00 a share before they do a complete rollout.

Guess I'll have to wait as well.....doesn't seem to be available for my account either....Sure will be nice......

it worked for me flawlessly. you have to go to your gmail account on the web. then click settings on the tab forwarding and pop/imap on the buttom you will see imap access. click to enabled.

then thats the time you have to set on your iphone.

Originally Posted by simonsturzenegger

It looks like the older Gmail accounts are the first ones to use IMAP with
Hope it's coming to mine as well soon...

As already stated, this is not the case. My older personal account doesn't have it, however my new account that I use for work purposes only does have it.

While we're on the topic, does anyone know a way to make GMail query your external mail faster? I've not found a way to make this possible....

What I'm talking about is I have it setup so that I'm using gmail to pull my mail from my work account, which is great, however it does it at purely random times. Any thoughts? Thanks!