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Reliable Wireless Email Through Cellphones? 26

Posted by Cliff from the entering-email-with-10-keys-a-painful-experience dept.
neuroticia asks: "I recently purchased a cellphone and went with voicestream service with the expectation that I would be able to send emails through the cellphone using that service. However, my experience thus far is that only one out of every 5 outgoing emails gets through, and only 2 out of 3 incoming emails gets through. Has anyone found a wireless carrier who has a higher rate of success for delivery of emails sent through their service? Or even better- does anyone know of a wireless provider that *notifies* you when your email will not get through?"
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Reliable Wireless Email Through Cellphones? More

Reliable Wireless Email Through Cellphones?

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  • Sprint & QCP-6035 (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Moonwick ( 6444 ) on Monday April 29, 2002 @04:54AM (#3428004) Homepage
    Unless you're looking for incoming mail notification, you would probably be best served with a Kyocera Smartphone [kyocera-wireless.com] (running PalmOS) and either the included Eudora mail client, or any other of your choosing.

    Note, however, that this solution will require you to check your e-mail manually, which might be undesirable for you. But it does guarantee (as much as you can trust your SMTP server) that your mail will go out.
    • The Kyocera Smartphone can be free these days, with all of the appropriate Sprint rebates applied. I have the Samsung i300 (color, backlit) phone -- similar to the Kyocera, but with an enhanced display. These phones can send/receive through any dialup ISP using SMTP and POP. Typically you configure Eurora to fetch the first 20 lines, ignore busy mailing lists, et cetera.

      Beware, though: You have to specifically order the right digital package from Sprint or you'll be greeted with hundreds of dollars of unexpected charges for use of the cell modem. On the lower-priced packages, all modem usage is charged at a premium rate and not considered to be normal phone usage.

      Also note that these phones work ONLY with PCS, not with GSM.

  • I gave up with both SMS->Email and WAP->Email services, and now use my Sharp Zaurus to send emails using infra red to dial up to my ISP.
  • I don't know about the US, but here in germany there are MANY companys offerering sms email notify, baiscly they send you the headline as sms. usually you buy a packet for sms notification with 50 sms per month for a couple of euros

  • get a gprs solution (Score:2, Informative)

    by rerunn ( 181278 )
    Get a gprs solution like a Blackberry. Doesnt have the 160 char limitation like SMS. And provides for delivery status to other blackberrys.
  • Hey, maybe they're sending your mail to other people [nzoom.com].

  • Vodafone + Wap Works Great (Score:3, Informative)

    by gagravarr ( 148765 ) on Monday April 29, 2002 @08:47AM (#3428514) Homepage
    I use the vodafone Wap email system, and it works great. It quite happily checks both POP3 and IMAP servers for mail (though no TLS on the connections yet). You can view your mail (and folders other than your inbox if using an IMAP mail server), send mail, file it etc. Works brilliantly, all it needs is a wap phone. Oh, and if you want, you can use GPRS to access the vodafone wap service, so you wouldn't even need to dialup before sending and receiving.

    Since you're probably in America, I'd go look for your local vodafone partner, and see if they offer a similar service. http://www.vodafone.com/ [vodafone.com] would be the place to start looking.

  • I've got a Nokia 3360 and Rogers AT&T service in the Toronto area. So far, all e-mails have come through - as far as I can tell. Though, the fookers charge like 10 cents an e-mail going out and give you so many coming in before you pay $$$.

  • I also have VoiceStream (Score:2, Interesting)

    by TheAB ( 38019 )
    I agree... during the first week or so, my email wasnt that reliable with Voicestream.

    Yet, it seems that its gotten better. I have set up mail aliases for all important addresses, and i havent noticed any dropped messages. I also copy:forward all incoming messages to my real email account as well, as a backup. so if the phone is off, i'll just get it from my machine.
    You can set it all up on their website.

    Also, VoiceStream just got bought by Deutsche Telecom (according to a Cust. Srv. Rep i spoke to), hence the little Tmobile icon everywhere..

    Maybe (hopefully) this means we'll see some of the much better services in Europe and Japan.

    I'm praying...
  • I have a Mitsubishi t250 CDPD phone with AT&T as the carrier -- I was reluctant to go with At&t at first, with it's reputation as the "evil empire", but they were one of the few carriers at the time that offered flat rate unlimited WAP. I went with them as have been pleasantly surprised.

    Granted, *typing* email on a phone is dubius at best (with the keypad, et al), but I've had little in the way of connectivity problems.

    For a while last year I also was with Sprint, and although they were a pay-by-the-minute company, I found it reliable for the little bit I used it.

    DO NOT USE QWEST. They are an EVIL, EVIL company. Their WAP service sucks (unreliable to the extremes), and their customer service (for the wireless division, anyway) sucks worse.
    • I would agree. Having used AT&T's service in Alaska (which would not be known for the reliability of it's wireless service) I would say that at least 90% of my email messages go through. (there is the odd lost message but it happens quite rarely). This is quite a feat considering the cell reception areas are full of holes and call quality could not, even charitably, be called consistent.
  • That seems like a very low number of sucessful SMS and email messages. I've never had a problem sending unless the network is -really- busy (happened once, said SMS could be sent, try again later) Try heading over to Howard's forums [howardforums.com] and see if anyone else has the same problems (they have forums for each provider)
  • In today's (4/29/02) New York Times there is an article [nytimes.com] (requires login but its free) about a new Blackberry device that also works as a cellphone. I have been so happy with my Blackberry that we call 'em "crackberries" at work because they are so addictive. The email from my 550 (the cheapo unit) always gets out using a store and forward system that waits for a good signal.
  • I'm sure you're looking for US info, but for interest sake, the options in Canada are quite good. I have lots of experience with two of the major carriers, Fido (GSM) and Bell Mobility (CDMA). Both carriers as far as I've seen deliver 100% of all text and e-mail messages. If your phone is off, or out of coverage area, the message will be delivered as soon as connection is re-established. Bell also has a web based interface where you can see the messages sent to you and whether they have been delivered or not.
  • Nextel is the only solution I've found to be reliable in delivery. I'll admit that you do get ocasional delay in delivery, but it always gets there. In my region(northern cal) the delivery times are better than any other service I've used. If you require two way messaging you can use their WAP 2 way messaging interface. We've used several pager and phone messaging providers and nextel is the only one we've been fairly satisfied with.
    • I have to carry a Nextel, but I've reached the sad conclusion that neither 1-way or 2-way messaging can be relied upon. It's been particularly bad lately - some messages never get through, some get delayed by a couple of *days*.
  • There are fairly few solutions for this that work reliably, especially in the US.

    Your problems with voicestream are expected: I assume your wireless email delivery solution with them is based on SMS, and unfortunately voicestream SMS delivery is far from reliable.

    You have a couple of options:

    1) Get a Blackberry (www.blackberry.com). The service is *expensive* on a monthly basis, but email delivery is rock solid. I had one for a while, and got addicted to it.

    2) Get a smartphone or a PDA with integrated wireless that supports POP/IMAP. There are a few on the market today (someone mentioned the Kyocera smartphone, there's also the Handspring Treo), although the current products are lacking in several regards.

    3) Wait a few months there will be Smartphone and/or wireless PDA combos from Microsoft (don't hurt me, they aren't bad products), or from SonyEricsson and Nokia. www.voicestream.com has pre-signup info for the MS wireless PDA, not sure on release dates for the SonyEricsson or Nokia devices.

    I know it sucks to say wait a few months, but things really will get better shortly. Most of the new devices rolling out are capable of real data connections back to your corporation through dial-up or VPN, and therefore don't have the security issues of forwarding mail through a gateway. The newer devices also support lots of local storage, so the viewing interactions are far better than with wap phones, where you have to be in coverage to deal with your mail.

    • I have a Motorola T900 which uses Motorola ReFlex, which is a reliable, economical service. The T900 is way cheaper than a Blackberry (~$49 vs. ~$399) and cheaper service (~$19 vs ~$39). It has a keyboard and a 4-line display and is about the size of the smaller Blackberry, but thicker as it folds. Plus it comes in colors other than black [slashdot.org].

      It works great. There are some dead areas in town, but it picks up the messages when you come back into service because it polls for messages, so it works quite reliably. Based on the polling response, it lets you know on the display whether it can receive messages, send messages as well, or has no service. It calls the latter situation "Storing Messgaes", and in fact, I went on vacation and when I got back to the US, it buzzed me with messages when I got off the plane!

      I think TigerDirect has them for $49, or maybe Radio Shack. There are a variety of services plans: Arch Wireless, Verizon. I use a WebLink Wireless [weblinkwireless.com] plan which was my only option when I bought the T900 from Motorola (who directed me to Positive.com [positive.com]. It's $19.95/mo for 100K bytes.)

  • Nextel is great. No additional per-message costs. Message length is 1024 chars. They call it two-way paging though, but anyone can send e-mail to it via a @messaging.nextel.com and you can send and reply to internet e-mail addresses, so it's basically e-mail. Some phones have decent word prediction so you only have to hit one key per letter.

    The gotcha with nextel to watch for is to send stuff to @messaging.nextel.com. If you send to @page.nextel.com its basically SMS and costs a few pennies a page after 300. The former method sends an alert to your phone and you have to connect to their network to grab the message. The SMS method delivers message to the phone so its right there.

    I've used this in a number of areas on east coast plus everywhere between Phoenix, Vegas, and Los Angeles. Coverage is remarkably good (just a few dead spots between phoenix and las vegas, south of I-40).

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