IMAP or ActiveSync (Motorola Q) (newbie on mobile)

[su_A_ve]

Can anyone comments on pros/cons of a direct IMAP client vs. Activesync on a Motorola Q for example? I guess I don't quite see the 'push' aspect of activesync (or don't understand it) and think of it just as scheduled pull (like the IMAP client works).

BTW, to clarify, at this point we are only interested in syncing email (no contacts nor calendar).

TIA...

[jholder]

Calendar/Addressbook is the biggie. You don't get that on IMAP.

[p24t]

The biggest advantage for me is the syncing of my contacts and calendar as well.

[Lynner]

I found this similar Forum Hope this helps
Active Sync vs. IMAP for Direct Push email

[su_A_ve]

Was having a hard time with search... Eventually found the thread...

Anyway, yes, I'm aware of the benefits with calendar/contact. However, we are just looking at email. We currently don't use calendar/contacts within zimbra (well, contacts somehow - mostly public 10,000+ entries in public GAL - and we would NOT want this sync), instead we use syncml for this.

So, just looking at email, I was trying to figure out the diffs between imap and 'push'. How does the zimbra sever 'pushes' email to the activesync client? AFAIK, someone else initiates a 'check for email' and then messages are sent, right?

But otherwise, isn't IMAP better? Isn't there issues with deleted/read messages, specially if someone is to use another client (thunderbird or gui)?

Again, TIA...

[bradb21]

Outlook in Windows Mobile does not do IMAP IDLE, so you will not get email pushed to your phone upon arrival in your mailbox. You will only be able to do timed sync intervals. If you want IMAP IDLE on Windows Mobile you will need a program like Flexmail.

[jjzhuang]

other than contacts/calendar, there's also the issue of efficiency. zimbrasync is a sync protocol. imap can be kind of used to mimic "sync", but is pretty heavy. for example, if you mark a message in Inbox from unread to read, with zimbrasync it's a matter of device asking server what's new, and server saying message 123 is now read.

with imap, the same thing becomes a lot chattier. you'd have to grab flags of all messages and compare with local flags. as a result, many imap clients don't do full sync often. so you can see descrepency between server mailbox and client mailbox easily. for example, if you observe how thunderbird works, you'll notice client and server copy of the mailbox view are often very different in terms of what's read and what's unread.

[bdial]

another thing, I havn't tried this in a while but I know when we were using windows mobile phones with our old cyrus imap system, we could never get them to put Sent Items up on the server correctly. Not sure if this works now but with activesync it's a breeze

[jjzhuang]

Originally Posted by bdial

another thing, I havn't tried this in a while but I know when we were using windows mobile phones with our old cyrus imap system, we could never get them to put Sent Items up on the server correctly. Not sure if this works now but with activesync it's a breeze

that's because of the split between IMAP and SMTP. IMAP itself doesn't have a way to send messages. unless it's a very special server (believe gmail does that), most smtp server won't put a copy into your sent folder on its own.

[bradb21]

Also because Outlooks used folder names like "Deleted Items" rather than "Trash" and "Sent Items" rather than "Sent".

I had the same problems with Outlook client when trying to talk to most IMAP servers. Outlook likes to talk to Exchange and that's about it.