The email client on the Samsung Jet is a fine piece of work. It supports SSL/TLS connections, attachments, archiving by folders, and forwarding of mails. It allows you to block incoming mails either by address or subject. You can also print an email via Bluetooth.

With the built-in documents viewer, you can read (but not edit) any PDF, Word, Excel, and PowerPoint attachments that are sent to you as email attachments.

Yet, it has limitations. It has a maximum download limit of 5mb per mail, so any emails larger than that don’t get retrieved. But aren’t we just nitpicking? 5mb sounds like much for most users.

The mail client can be configured to retrieve mails at intervals of 30 minutes, 1 hour, 3 hours, 6 hours, 12 hours, or daily. We wish much smaller intervals like 5 and 10 minutes are available. You cannot set specific hours of the day when mails should be checked as obtains on some more advanced email clients.

In our First Impressions of the device, we mentioned that there is a generic problem that Samsung devices have with Gmail IMAP connections. While POP3 works fine with Gmail, IMAP is just more elegant for us.

We were still sulking over this Gmail IMAP issue (you see, we really like this phone, but we use Gmail IMAP extensively!), when we tried out the included Exchange ActiveSync application.

Exchange ActiveSync is a data synchronization service that enables mobile users to access their e-mail, calendar, and contacts and retain access to this information while they are offline. Fortunately, Google Sync uses the Microsoft® Exchange ActiveSync® protocol.

We set it up and within minutes, we were synchronising not only our mail, but also contacts and calendar. The really, really, really nice thing here is that Exchange ActiveSync has a PUSH option (which, of course, we enabled immediately), and our emails were pushed to the Jet real-time, Blackberry style.

The Exchange ActiveSync application also has a widget that can be put up on the homescreen of the Jet so you can have easy access to your mails.

Well, we have stopped sulking. For our most critical email services, we can actually ignore the email client totally and use Exchange ActiveSync instead. This makes up for any shortcomings in the retrieval intervals of the standard email client.

For example, at our sister company, Alireta, we developed our reputation as a respected Nigerian web host by staying online all the time (at least one staff is always online at any time), so that we get real-time support and server notifications. Any handset – smartphone or not – that helps us do that better gets a pat on the back from us.

The Samsung S8003 Jet is looking more and more like a complete worktool, needing very little help from third party applications. While we are certain that it is not literally “smarter then smartphone”, as Samsung touts it, this gadget has narrowed down the gap so much that we are agreed that this gets the job done for us. We’ve been smartphone users for ages, so coming from us, that is saying something.

Update 4th February 2010
There is an annoying issue with the Jet’s implementation of IMAP in the built-in mail client. Ideally, on IMAP, if a mail arrives on phone and is read, the status of that particular mail on the server is automatically changed to “Read” as well.

On the Jet, this does not work that way. Any mails read on the phone stay unread on the server, and you have to manually mark them “Read” when you access your mails via webmail.

We ask: what is the point of IMAP then? This is annoying, seeing that it results in duplicate actions and is essentially a waste of time for a busy person.

Coming soon: Did you know that in addition to the great 5 megapixel camera, the Jet has a really useful image editor, and (yes) video editor? No; we are not kidding.

The Samsung Jet is also your media studio. Don’t go away!

Most current mid-tier and all current high-end mobile phones have built-in email clients in their Messaging menu. This means that you can recieve, manage and respond to your emails on your phone. Benefits include having access to your mail when away from your desktop or notebook. You can always fire a quick and short response, and then follow it up with a detailed response later.

Setting Up

1. The email account you want to setup on your phone must be either POP3 or IMAP (the latter is better). This includes Gmail, corporate email accounts, and premium (not free) Yahoo email accounts.

2. You need to have a full internet serviccee on your line via GPRS, EDGE, 3G or HSDPA. WAP internet won’t do. Luckilly, all the 4 GSM networks now offer full internet to pay-as-you-go subscribers.

3. You need to know your mail servers, both incoming and outgoing. These are usually in the format: mail.domain.com, imap.domain.com, smtp.domain.com. There must be two of them, though in some cases the two may be the same.

4. Your email username (usually the full email address) and its password

If you have all the above, simply go into your Messaging settings menu and input them in their respective fields. During setup, choose IMAp as mail service type. If your account does not run IMAP, then opt for POP3. Ask your webmaster or company technical support members for help if necesarry.

Some mail clients offer the option to set automatic retrieval, such that at the set times or intervals, the phone connects to your mail server to download new mails.

Let me know how it goes setting up your email account on your phone. I’ll be here to guide you through the tough spots if you run into trouble.

Nokia Messaging enables s60 users to quickly set up, access, and use their email on their Nokia devices through a service that is optimized for mobile email. The appplication and service allows users to configure up to 10 email accounts, and supports POP3, IMAP. Gmail, Yahoo, Hotmail, and enterprise servers.

How It Works
Signup online, and then download the application to your s60 device.

During signup, you will be asked to configure a primary email account, to which you can later add others.

Once configured, Nokia Email serves as a push service, dropping your new mails into your handset automatically.

The interface is a little more polished than the built-in s60 email client. Unfortunately, when installed, Nokia Email runs as a separate application from the built-in client. This I did not like. That means I have to look in two different places for my messages. I would have preferred that it replaces the built-in client.

I had my Gmail and Yahoo accounts setup and running in no time. I also had a work email account setup too. Mails were dropped in for a while. But then came the niggle…

An Extra Step in the Email Retrieval Process
For quite a number of minutes, Nokia Email’s server could not be accessed. I tried administering it on PC and got an error that the server was currently not accessible. For that period, I could not retrieve new mails.

This leads to the very reason why I personally will not use Nokia Messaging: it introduces an extra step in email retrieval. Now, instead of connecting directly to my mail server, I have to depend on a middleman.

This means that I not only have to count on my ISP/mobile network and my mail server to be online, but I also have to count on a 3rd party – the Nokia Messaging server – to be available in order for me to get my mails.

I also have to share my email login details with this 3rd party. In my opinion, it just compounds matters.

Conclusion
I am sure that Nokia Messaging will be found useful by certain sets of people. But call me a pessimist on this one, I’m just not quite thrilled. The built-in email client on my s60 device does a good job enough of notifying me of new critical mails at an interval of 30 minutes. Unless my job suddenly requires me to receive emails per second, I have no use for Nokia Messaging. For now.

I am not sure why, but articles on Zain Mobile Internet are extremely popular on Mobility Nigeria. As a matter of fact, the top two items in terms of page views on this site are about Zain Mobile Internet.

Perhaps, part of the reason for their popularity can be attributed to the elusiveness of full internet service on prepaid lines. For quite a while, Zain Nigeria’s official policy is that only WAP is available to prepaid subscribers. This means POP3/IMAP mail cannot be used, and instant messaging apps won’t work, among others. See: From Celtel to Zain; GPRS further restricted, published in August last year.

Earlier this year, I demonstrated that with minimal tweaking, email (POP/IMAP) indeed works on the Zain network (Zain Data works on Phones for Web and Email). But IM apps didn’t.

Last Saturday, however, I receeived an SMS from Zain stating in part:

New from Zain! Internet Browsing, MMS & downloads now possible on your handset!

That sounded to me like Zain had done a rethink of their rather backward policy of limiting prepaid lines to WAP access only. I had some spare time yesterday and dashed over to the nearest Zain outlet, where I requested for full internet provisioning.

I was told that the system was problematic, but the guy I spoke with took down my details anyway. I got home around 5p.m. today and a few minutes later, I received an SMS configuration on my device. I saved it, took a peek and saw full internet settings.

In a few minutes, I was chatting on Yahoo Messenger via Slick, checking my mails, and doing all sorts of stuff. No tweaks. Just straight out-of-the-box.

There’s still neither EDGE nor 3G at my location. Yes; its gross. This is Lagos, where every other 3G-enabled network has almost seamless coverage.

So, it is official. Full internet is now available for prepaid subscribers on the Zain network. By the way, I got another SMS announcing that Blackberry service is also now available for prepaid subscribers.

Hop over to a Zain centre and specify that you want full internet service activated on your line. Then you can forget about using proxies in order to be able to browse on your PC. Alternatively, send SMS in the format, “internet sonyericsson P910i”, to 232 to get activated. If it doesn’t work, keep trying.

For those who may find the Zain internet configuration settings useful, here they are:

APN: internet.ng.zain.com
Username: internet
Password: internet
IP/Proxy: None

Well done, Zain. You are late, but hey, we’ll still throw a welcome party! And while we are at it, please extend EDGE and 3G coverage some more please.

Update: Official Zain Internet Provisioning: An Update

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