Best email for Treo

[Dr.Grace]

Chattemail looks great and I have it a try for a few days. Unfortunately, chattermail is not practical for SDMA Treo 650s because the push technology that comes with it disables voice calls and in turn your incomming calls are automatically sent to your voicemail.

I use Chatter all the time with Verizon (CDMA). It's true that you can't receive voice calls while data is being transferred, but merely having "push" activated doesn't mean that your phone is constantly moving data. (When the data connection is established, you see the grey arrows at the upper right of the screen, but only when the arrows turn green is data being transferred. When the arrows are grey, you can receive voice calls.) The inability to receive both data and voice calls is only a problem if you have frequent e-mail messages sent to you.

But you don't HAVE to use the push features with Chatter. I think for most people, push is overkill anyway. Some people need to be reachable instantly, of course, but I think for most of us it's more than enough to "pull" the e-mail every fifteen minutes or so. Actually, I find e-mail to be one of the most distracting things. There have been studies showing that people's effective IQ is diminished by such frequent interruptions in the flow of their thinking.

If you REALLY need instant and constant e-mail, you should probably get a GSM phone. But for my purposes, Chatter works fine on CDMA if I set it to sync periodically. One of the great things about Chatter is that it's so flexible: you can set it up any way that works for you, pretty much.

Don

[Kwan]

Interesting..I wasnt aware that CDMA didnt provide true push, as seen in GSM phones. Which brings up my question, when receiving email through GSM and I get a call, does the call go to voicemail?

[Dr.Grace]

CDMA DOES support push. Chatter can do this with an IMAP account. It's just as good as Blackberry. The only problem is that voice calls will go directly to voice mail if they arrive just as you are transferring data. I believe that GSM does not have this problem, but I have no direct experience with GSM.

Don

[livemotion]

CDMA DOES support push. Chatter can do this with an IMAP account. It's just as good as Blackberry. The only problem is that voice calls will go directly to voice mail if they arrive just as you are transferring data. I believe that GSM does not have this problem, but I have no direct experience with GSM.

Don

So to sum it up...if you have a CDMA Treo 650 and use Chatter mail with Push technology you're rendering your phone useless as a phone - that is since you can't receive incomming calls because they're automatically redirected to your voice mail.

Push technology is the only area where Chatter mail excells at in comparison to other mail clients out there. Which would seem that if you have a CDMA Treo 650 you're better of purchasing another mail client...unless you hate receiving incomming calls and prefer to call your clients/friends back :P

But for my purposes, Chatter works fine on CDMA if I set it to sync periodically. One of the great things about Chatter is that it's so flexible: you can set it up any way that works for you, pretty much.

Yep, you can setup Chatter mail to receive your emails periodically...but so does every other mail client out there. But when it comes to everything besides "Push" Snapper and Agendus mail far excell Chatter in terms of downloading attachments, interface, and compatibility, etc etc

[Dr.Grace]

The problem with CDMA is not about "push". It's that EVERY data transmission will block incoming voice calls. Having an IMAP e-mail account set to sync will not block every incoming call, just those that come in at the precise moment an e-mail is being pushed or sent. In that regard, push is no different from pull. The problem with pushed e-mail is that you can't predict when an e-mail message will be sent to you. But similarly, with pulled e-mail, you can't be sure that a voice call won't come at the moment you are connecting to the server to retrieve your mail. Same problem, really. You also can't be sure that someone won't call you at the precise moment you're surfing the web on Blazer.

The bottom line is that you can use any kind of data service with CDMA, but at the moment you are transmitting data, you cannot receive a voice call.

We buy Treos because we want BOTH voice and data converged into one device. However, the CDMA implementation has decided for us that data takes precedence over voice. If you don't like that, you have to get a GSM device or move to EVDO.

Don

[livemotion]

:P thats what I said. Therefore chatter on a CDMA phone is not a practical choice, unless you set it to receive emails at specific intervals - but if you're doing that already you're better of with other mail clients.

[Dr.Grace]

:P thats what I said. Therefore chatter on a CDMA phone is not a practical choice, unless you set it to receive emails at specific intervals - but if you're doing that already you're better of with other mail clients.

That's a matter of opinion. I happen to like Chatter a lot. I used to use Snapper, but it developed a habit of losing my emails.

Don

[livemotion]

isn't that the topic of this thread?

[WebFiddler]

Treo 600 GSM. Registered Snapper user, and thought it was the best thing since sliced bread. But I abandoned it for Chatter, with NO regrets. Chatter's been in always-on mode for almost a year, auto-turned off only at night for sleep time. During the early days, I would sometimes lose a call to voice mail, but that hasn't happened with recent Chatter versions -- going back, I'd say, for the past 4-5 months. Only explanation I can conjure is that because each mail is downloaded as it arrives, it's quick; so, if a call is trying to come through, the download ends as the call rings. I say this because there have been times when I've noticed that a mail was just d/l'd, immediately followed by a call. Thus explaining why Chatter is the one app guaranteed to keep me faithful to the Palm platform. THAT's how valuable /stable /inherently intelligent I perceive it to be.

[Miller]

Ok, I've read through the threads on this subject and I've looked at a few alternatives to versamail. I have an unlocked Cingular 650 with an unlimited data plan. I currently use versamail which sometimes pushes my mail through and sometimes doesn't.

Sorry to ask a silly question, but what will either Snappermail or chatter give me that makes the cost worth while?