(Source: Times of
Check Gmail, Hotmail, Yahoo! And Other Web Mail On Your Handset Free Of Cost
Nimish Dubey
Email on the mobile has been around for a few years now and generally associated with the highly mobile professional with deep pockets. But it seems push mail—the revolutionary mobile mail service pioneered by BlackBerry—could finally be going mainstream. And the reason for this is simple: some companies are offering the service free of cost.
Push mail magic…
For the uninitiated push mail is a service that allows users to get mail delivered directly (‘pushed’) to their mobile devices. In simple English, one gets a mail on one’s mobile device the moment it arrives in the inbox—just as one would using an e-mail client (such as Outlook Express) on a desktop.
The moment a new mail comes, one gets an indication—whether in the form of a chime or a vibration—on one’s PDA or cellphone. Needless to say, this service was immensely popular among executives on the move, as they could keep in touch with their email without having to bother about lugging about a notebook with a wireless internet connection.
The catch (there always is one!) was that this service inevitably came with a price tag. Whether you used BlackBerry’s push mail service or the ones provided by other cellular service providers (such as Hutch and Airtel), you ended up paying for the facility.
What’s more, push mail was limited to a few devices—generally high-end smartphones. It was therefore hardly surprising that for most people, it remained an ‘enterprise app’ rather than one meant for the common mobile user.
…goes mainstream!
But that seems set to change. Thanks to initiatives from some developers, such as Consilient (www.consilient.com), users can now get push mail on their handsets free of cost—all one needs is a handset that can access the internet. And unlike other push mail services, this one works with almost all mid-segment phones.
One just needs to do is register and give one’s email ID and phone number at the developer’s website, and then download the application. That’s it—the application keeps checking your mail server for any new mails and notifies you the moment any new mail comes in.
You can not only check your office mail on it but also use it to keep track of your webmail such as Yahoo! Mail and Google.
Most of the free push mail applications are pretty powerful.
They allow you to compose, reply and delete mails and even view attachments (provided your handset supports the attachment format—you will not, for example, be able to view an MS Office file on a phone that does not support MS Office formats!).
In the case of Consilient, one can even use the application as a plain email client. Instead of keeping it running all the time, one can just use it to check or compose mails. And as far as efficiency is concerned, the free solutions give the likes of BlackBerry a run for its money—we got a mail the moment it arrived using Consilient just a fraction after a colleague got it on her BlackBerry.
Not perfect, but hey, it’s free!
Of course, there are still a few niggles to be sorted out. Free push mail servers sometimes seem to take forever to retrieve new mail.
And there are also whispers about just how secure they are, although nothing concrete has come to light as yet and the likes of Consilient and Emoze insist that they take every conceivable care to protect their users.
And while the service itself is free, users might end up having to shell out a fair bit for the data transferred over their GPRS connections, unless they have an unlimited internet access plan.
Finally, keeping a free push mail application running in the background can drain a cellphone’s battery—not only does the phone’s processor have to work to keep the application running but battery is also expended when the phone remains connected to the internet!
But all these are minor niggles if one considers the benefit these applications offer—the ability to access and respond to email on the move without any extra expenditure.
Push mail’s days of being a niche service seem all set to end.
Free push mail services Consilient: www.consilient.com Emoze: www.emoze.com Morange: www.morange.com Cortado: www.cortado.com
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