Dave in LA

Now that Gmail has IMAP support, my shiny new Cingular 3125 just became a nice synchronized mobile email machine. I thought I would post a nice little tutorial for other Windows Mobile 5.0 users to get them started in setting up Gmail for their Cingular 3125.

Update

If you’re having problems with blank messages check this out.  The problem is with Google’s handling of HTML messages, hopefully they will fix this soon.

Step 1
First, get to this screen in the Messaging section of your phone. On the Cingular 3125 this requires you to press Start->2 and you should be to the screen below.

Step 2
Scroll down to Outlook E-Mail and select the Menu button. Then scroll down to Options and select that.

Step 3
Once you’re on the Options page, scroll down to Account Options and you should see the E-mail Settings screen.

Step 4
Fill out the Your Name and E-mail address fields and be sure to uncheck the Attempt to obtain e-mail settings from The Internet. Press the Next button to continue.

Step 5
Enter in your Gmail User name (the text before @gmail.com in your email address) and Password that you use to login to Gmail. Leave the Domain field empty and check Save password if you don’t want to have to enter your password each time you connect. Press the Next button to continue.

Step 6
For Server type select IMAP4. Enter whatever name you want to show up in the menu shown in Step 1 for Account name and for network, select your data network which in my case is creatively named The Internet by Cingular. Press the Next button to continue.

Step 7
For Incoming Server enter “imap.gmail.com” be sure to check Requires SSL connection as well. For the Outgoing Server enter “smtp.gmail.com” and check Outgoing server requires authentication as well. Luckily, you can ignore the Outgoing Server Settings since they should be fine at their defaults. Press the Next button to continue.

Finishing up
The next couple screens give you options for how much of your email to download and how often your phone will check in with Gmail for new messages. I personally set mine to only check my email when I tell it to since setting it to check every x minutes killed my battery life. If you have a phone with a better battery or more efficient email checking, you may be able to get away with this option, but it didn’t really work for me.

It’s pretty nice to have access to your email anywhere and it definitely makes my phone able to do almost everything that an iPhone can do, which is nice. I bought this phone as a cheaper more cost effective mobile internet device since the iPhone is still quite pricey. So far, it’s working out pretty well for me.

Hope the tutorial is helpful, feel free to post any questions/suggestions in the comments.