iPhone 4 Mail Setup - IMAP vs POP?

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Level 1

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iPhone 4 Mail Setup - IMAP vs POP?

I've had a lot of frustration getting my email on all of my devices ever since I added a work PC into the mix. I have three email accounts - 2 personal Gmail accounts and and a work sbcglobal.net (Yahoo/ATT) account. I also have 3 devices I use to access these accounts - an iPhone 4 with the built-in Mail app, Macbook Pro with Mail app, and a Windows 7 laptop with Outlook 2010. What I want is to have all three of these devices get each and every email. What happens currently is that emails either end up on my PC or on my iPhone and Macbook. I'm asking the question here because the part in the chain I understand least is the iPhone mail.

I believe the problem either lies with IMAP vs. POP3 setup or with some kind of syncing feature on the iPhone. All 3 email accounts are setup for POP3 access on my PC and the 2 gmail accounts are POP3 and the SBCGlobal is IMAP on my Macbook. The iPhone Mail app seems to have set up the emails accounts automatically as 2 standard GMail accounts and 1 standard Yahoo account (SBCGlobal is run through Yahoo), but I can't figure out whether the iPhone is using IMAP or POP. Does anyone know if the iPhone uses IMAP or POP for these types of mail programs or if there's a way for me to see which protocol it's using? I've explored the iPhone's Mail settings and can't find anything.

I was also curious if the new iOS 5 and iCloud stuff somehow causes my mailboxes on the phone and macbook to sync together since my emails seems to usually be only on my phone and mac or only on my PC.

Any ideas would be greatly appreciated. I've been dealing with this for a couple months now and would like to fix it all ASAP. Again, I want every email I receive to show up on all 3 of my devices if you can help me with that, but if you could just explain how iPhone Mail is setup that would still be very helpful for me.

iPhone 4, iOS 5.0.1

Posted on Dec 14, 2011 10:45 AM

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Answer 1

Rick Wall Author

Level 1

10 points

Dec 14, 2011 11:31 AM in response to Rick Wall

Since posting, my reading has led me to believe my best bet to have all emails show up everywhere would be to set all of my accounts to IMAP. Does this sound good?

I still need to learn some more about how the iPhone sets up email though. Can anyone tell me if my iPhone mail is POP or IMAP?

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Answer 2

Dec 14, 2011 11:35 AM in response to Rick Wall

When you create an email account on your iPhone you choose whether you want POP3, IMAP or Exchange. The server, of course, has to support your choice. IMAP is not supported on many basic ISP based email services, but is supported by gmail, hotmail premium, yahoo premium, etc. Exchange is mostly for corporate email, but gmail supports it also. The advantage of Exchange is that email arrives in near real time.

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Answer 3

Rick Wall Author

Level 1

10 points

Dec 14, 2011 11:58 AM in response to Lawrence Finch

I could be wrong, but I don't think I got that option. I'm pretty the iPhone add account started with "enter your email address" and then said something like "we can setup your account for you now!"

Maybe I just need to re-add the accounts?

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Answer 4

ejpre

Level 3

810 points

Dec 14, 2011 11:58 AM in response to Rick Wall

POP3 is the oldest and least sophisticated of the protocols, dating back to when disk space and bandwidth were a lot more precious than they are now. It pulls messages from the inbox on the server, and by default it will usually delete them. You can go into the settings and tell it to leave them on the server so they will be available to your clients on other machines (note! since any client can issue the delete command after downloading messages, you must make sure to change this setting on *each* client, or suddenly all your messages will disappear from the server). POP3 does not support a directory structure at the server; that is, if you organize your messages into folders on one machine, you will not see this from the others.

IMAP is a much more sophisticated protocol, in which mail and the folder structure are maintained at the server, so they "look the same" from every client. There is generally a quota, so at some point you may have to explicitly delete messages and/or move them to a local folder.

Most of the major email services support IMAP, and your iPhone will configure itself accordingly if you select them. For other services, you can select POP or IMAP, and you should *always* select IMAP if it's available. There are some subtleties, like encryption and non-standard ports that can hang things up, but most services have a webpage laying all of these things out.

Exchange (MAPI) is proprietary to Microsoft, and I don't think iPhones support it.

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Answer 5

Dec 14, 2011 12:11 PM in response to ejpre

iphones DEFINITELY support Exchange. Also Enterprise integration, allowing the Exchange administrator to set security policy on the phone and control it remotely.

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Answer 6

Dec 14, 2011 12:13 PM in response to Rick Wall

Settings/Mail, Contacts, Calendar - Add Account. the first 7 have defined protocols, which are generally IMAP. If you choose Other one of the choices will be POP3 or IMAP.

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Answer 7

ejpre

Level 3

810 points

Dec 14, 2011 12:31 PM in response to Lawrence Finch

I stand corrected. I looked at add "other" account and only saw "POP" or "IMAP". I didn't notice that Microsoft Exchange was a whole separate category. Thanks.

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