I have been really surprised over the last few months at the amount of people who have been referred to Broadbyte with email capable mobile phones that they have never been able to get working properly. Either they have no access to e-mail at all, or they can only receive e-mail. These people, or their company, have spent good money on the latest smart phone technology yet aren't reaping the benefits of their investment. This trend hasn't been confined to one particular phone, OS or manufacturer; I have seen these problems on Symbian, iPhone, Blackberry and Windows Mobile devices.
In my opinion, none of these problems have been a fault of the individual phones, the OS, or the email software. In fact in general they are all very straight forward to configure. However if you do run into problems then they can be a little tricky to resolve if you don't have at least a small amount of knowledge on e-mail protocols. The alarming recurring theme amongst all of these problems is that the mobile carrier was either unwilling or unable to help, or at least point the customer in the right direction for a solution.
The main problems users of the phones faced when setting up their email can be split into two categories of email, SMTP (for POP3 and IMAP email), and Exchange Server. I'll deal with both of these separately.
SMTP (for POP3 and IMAP email)
In the majority of cases where this is the problem, users have managed to set their phones up to receive e-mail, however they are unable to send e-mails. This is generally because the incorrect SMTP details have been entered. Even if you have entered the exact same settings as you have in Outlook (or other email client), they may not necessarily be appropriate for your mobile. The reason for this is that many POP3, and IMAP email providers recommend that you use your ISPs (Internet Service Providers) SMTP server to send e-mail. ISPs generally only allow their SMTP servers to be accessed from devices connected to their broadband network. Therefore this will work fine on your PC when using outlook (or another e-mail client) as it is connected to your broadband, however, as your phone doesn't use the broadband connection these SMTP settings won't work for sending e-mail on your mobile.
You therefore have two options:
- Use an SMTP server from another e-mail account. Most mobile networks provide an SMTP server that you can use if you sign up to their e-mail service (or you could sign up for a gmail account and use their SMTP server). The downside of this solution is that the actual e-mail address that sends the e-mail won't be the main account you want to use. This may not concern you as reply e-mails will still go to the correct address, however it can look unprofessional if you are using the e-mail for business purposes.
- Find your email providers SMTP settings. Although many e-mail providers recommend that you use your ISPs SMTP server, they generally have their own as well but are not so forthcoming with that information. If you delve around deeply enough in their FAQs on their website you can generally find the correct settings, and if not you can always try phoning them for these details. This is the ideal solution as all e-mails will be sent from your actual e-mail address. If your email provider doesn't offer an SMTP server I'd recommend you move to another which does (please contact us for a recommended email provider).
Exchange Server
For mobile phones which need to be configured to access an exchange server, the majority of problems I have found are actually due to the exchange server not being configured correctly (or at all) for mobile email access. In this scenario you really need to speak to your network administrator, or IT provider if it is configured or hosted by an external company. (Just a small plug now for my own company: we do configure exchange servers as one of our services, so if you don't have an IT provider or you do but they can't get your phone email setup please complete our contact us form and we'll quote to sort this out for you. It is only a small job so it shouldn't cost too much).
Due to the different setups that all organisations and e-mail providers have, I'm afraid this article can't give you the correct settings to fix your specific problem, however, if you are still experiencing problems sending or receiving e-mail from your mobile phone after reading this article, please enter details of the problem in our contact us form and we'll try our best to help.