Setting up email on your phone if you use a forwarding email account.

Often you want your email sent to one account, which then forwards it to another account that you are currently using.  Sometimes the forwarding account provides a service, such as virus and spam filtering before it forwards your email.  Examples of such services are professional societies that give their members such an address.  I have one from the IEEE and another from MIT.  I use the former for all my IEEE work, and the later for activities related to MIT and also for most of my personal email.

What you want, in this case, is on all your outgoing email from any account to have the forwarding account as your return address.  The Internet email protocols permit this; however, many spammers take advantage, sending out spam from a hidden address and using a fake address as the return address.  In order to cut down on spam, most email providers simply don’t allow outgoing email from just anybody.  They often require that the sender have an account with them to receive email as well as to send it.  The challenge then is when the email provider receives an email to be sent out onto the Internet, how does this provider authenticate the sender as someone with an account?  The answer is amazingly simple: provide the incoming username and password with every outgoing email.  Some vendors also require getting your new email before sending anything.

OK, so setting up the standard Android email client to achieve all this is a matter of getting around a totally stupid user interface.  First, when you start setting up your email client, it asks you for your Account Name and Your Name.  These can be anything.  I use “My Mail” and “Gayn Winters”. Someone else might use “Castle Email” and “Dragon Lady.” Next it asks for a Default Account.  This is your “From” email address, and this is your one and only chance to enter it.  You can’t even edit it later, so get it right!  If you get it wrong, the easiest recovery is to reset your phone (see below,) It also asks for a password.  This is NOT the password for the From email account!!! Put in your regular email (POP or IMAP) password here.

Next click advanced Incoming Server email settings.  This will allow you to enter details to receive email usingPOPor IMAP.  Enter your User name (email address) and password here.  Actually, the email client copies what you entered as a password for the default email account.  This would be handy, except it looks like a bunch of asterisks. Also enter the address of your incoming email server.  It might look like pop.mailserver.com or mail.mailserver.com.  You’ll need to know the security type for your email server.  You can get this from the email you use on your PC.  Ditto for the port, which is usually 110.  You have two choices for “Delete email from the Server”.  I use “Never” and manage my email deletions from my PC. With the “Never” setting, deleting email on your phone does not affect email on your PC.  On the other hand, it might make sense for you to select “Delete when I delete from Inbox.” Just remember, once you click Delete with this setting, your deleted email is gone forever.

Next click Outgoing Server email settings.  The first field is SMTP server.  This is your outgoing server address.  It looks something like SMTP.MailServer.com or maybe mail.mailserver.com. (Case is not significant.)  For a security type, use the same type as on your PC.  Mine is “None”, but there are a lot of choices.  The port here may be different from your PC.  The recommended port is 587, and this may be different from this setting on your PC, which is probably port 25.  Use 587 if you can, because your regular email provider may block port 25 if the email isn’t coming from or going to one of its servers.  Your cell phone email is definitely going around your regular Internet provider.  Next is a box that says “Require sign-in”.  Even though your outgoing server may not require signing in, CHECK THIS BOX.  For User name, use the Incoming (POP or IMAP) User Name, and for Password do the same, i.e. use the Incoming email password.

Give it a try.

-gayn

P.S.  Some other recommendations that have nothing to do with getting email on your phone working.

1.  Turn on “Always cc or bcc myself.”  You want to do this so that you have a copy of your outgoing email on your PC.  I use bcc, because it is more like “putting a copy of outgoing email in my sent folder”.  If someone does a Reply All to your email, you will get only one copy, not two, of the reply.

2.  Edit your signature.  Most phones have a marketing line such as “Sent from my Galaxy S II.”  I add my regular signature above this line.  You can edit the marketing line, e.g. make it say “Sent from my smart phone” if you like.

3.  Edit the Email check frequency.  Checking for email uses battery energy, and it increases notification noise. If you don’t have unlimited data, you can also run up data charges.  Since I have unlimited data (as long as I don’t roam), I like to do this as frequently as possible, because my cell phone is my email cache, and I want it as up to date as possible – especially if I am on the road.

4.  Always check “Forward with Files” so that you don’t lose attachments when forwarding email.

P.P.S. To reset a Sprint phone,

Dial ##786#

SetMSL886879

Thin Phones

I got a new Samsung Galaxy S II.  It is an industrial engineering marvel.  It is modestly thin (about 3/8 inch) and about 2 3/4 inches wide and a little over 5 inches tall.  The LCD screen takes up almost all of the area.

I was dazzled by the resolution, the colors, and the features.  This was a phone to show off and be proud of.  I played and played with it initially, and slipped it into my pants side pocket with the greatest of pride.

WHAT WAS i THINKING OF???  HOW STUPID COULD I BE???

OK, let’s engage brain.  A long, thin piece of glass with delicate electronics beneath it.  In a pocket where sitting down would likely put a little, if not a lot, of torque on this gorgeous piece of thinness.  Of course it cracked!

Now I could complain and blame Samsung for a not very robust design, but really, whose fault was it? Mine!  It was almost as bad as putting a cell phone in a shirt pocket and bending over to let it fall to its death.

Fortunately I had purchased insurance.  Unfortunately the deductible was $100.  Even more unfortunately, you don’t get a new phone you get a rebuilt one.  To be honest, I can’t tell the difference; however, out of the box it needed an upgrade for the OS (it’s now at Android 2.3.6, build Gingerbread EL 29), an upgrade for the firmware, and and an upgrade to Sprint’s current Preferred Roaming List (PRN).

Let me be clear.  If you buy one of these long, thin, expensive beauties, BUY THE INSURANCE!

Also, the guy at the Sprint store also recommended a stiff case.  He recommended against those rubbery ones that are supposed to protect against shocks when you drop your phone.  The one I bought comes in two pieces, a stiff backing and a stiff cover with a clip to clip the assemble on a belt or whatever.  Now my vanity usually prevents me from using the cover and belt clip.  It is too bulky in my pocket and I look like a dork (I am one, but I don’t like to look the part) with the phone clipped to my belt.

I’ve got some protective thin plastic covers to protect the screen when I put the phone in my pocket.  They work, but don’t last too long.  Somehow I feel like my pant pocket is safer than my shirt pocket.  I’ve dropped a lot of phones from the latter.  I try to slide the phone into my pocket with the screen against the cloth of the pocket.  Seems to work.

-gayn

P.S. I see a lot of girls slip their cell phone in their hip pants pocket. In general I think this is not terribly smart.  How many cell phones get sat on?  For the thin phones, even bending over could be bad.