I have had two different readers ask me about 3rd party email applications that work on BlackBerry devices so I thought I would share this information with all of you. It seems that there are a few reasons to use a email application separate from the regular BlackBerry email service. I feel that Mark Rejhon of BlackBerryForums has done the best job of describing them in this thread.
The main reasons are:
- Separate personal emails from your business emails by having different applications that cannot be tracked by your company
- Access to email accounts that are not important enough to warrant push but you wish to check on the go
- Access to Gmail features not available on your BlackBerry client
The last reason is actually quite interesting. It turns out that with some of these applications you can check email on your BlackBerry without a BlackBerry data plan. In other words you can use your BlackBerry with a generic wireless data plan that is usually cheaper. I personally would never do that but it may be an alternative for some users.
Mark Rejhon has done a great job of collecting the current 3rd party email applications that are available.
Name Not Registered
Posted: January 8, 2008 at 10:50 PM EST
There are two additional reasons which have to do with the fact the BlackBerry does not have a true POP/IMAP client. POP/IMAP is done from RIMs servers NOT the handset. i.e. RIM has a client, the handset does not. This means:
1) You have to supply RIM your passwords so they can access your email accounts on your behalf
2) You have no control over how often your email account is polled for new messages. (RIM’s servers only scan at 15 minute intervals.)
Ronen Halevy ( View Profile) Senior admin - Posts: 5298
Posted: January 14, 2008 at 1:18 PM EST
Yeah the BIS implementation leaves alot to be desired but LogicMail has picked up quite a bit of the slack at least for me