Despite having been a blackberry (Verizon 8330 curve) user for only 2 days, I'm proud of the amount of research I've done on their e-mail system. I'm also extremely disappointed in the whole BIS thing. While I appreciate the long list of benefits of the Curve over my Treo, one thing I definitely did NOT expect is that e-mail would be LESS efficient than on my Treo... It is a BLAcKBERRY after all!

That's because my Treo used Chattermail, which took advantage of IMAP IDLE technology. Which has been around for years. And works - perfectly. I almost never had a problem with that feature... Everything I did on the treo was mimicked beautifully on the web server. (Note, I have NO plans to switch back to Treo!!!).

So back to the question at hand... Blackberry's BIS system appears pretty basic. Are they at all rumored to restructure this? Would they add full support for IMAP? In all my searchings, people invariably get a horrible and unpredictable delay in email transmission with the IMAP configuration BIS uses now (polling every 15 minutes or whatever). That's NOT push email!

For the record, I'm sticking with the POP system at the moment. At least my emails are getting pushed and I can delete them from the server. Then, at the end of the day, I can sit down and mark all my messages "Read" on gmail's site. But I'd really like to hear that Blackberry is working on a solution to this!

Oh, and even an application that allowed IMAP IDLE integration would be sufficient, I think!

Maybe you need to go back to the Treo? Sounds like you won't be happy with the BB.

Have you looked into BES or a hosted BES solution? That might provide what you are looking for.

If I remember correctly from my Treo days, the quickest I could get my email was 15 minutes. BIS is true push email, in that email is pushed to you about every 15 minutes, sometime faster. I don't have to go out and ask for it.

I find BIS to be very efficient and it works well for me. I do not see the need for instant, near real time email access.

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I use a BES and use BIS for other accounts. I find that gmail and yahoo are delivering as fast or faster than my BES email. And if I delete an email received on Yahoo, it deletes it on the web account. Pretty thourough for me.

I am unfamiliar with imap so I may be missing something else here that is important to you.

BES. Yes the real reason why BIS is so lacking. Well BES is expensive and unless you work for a big company you're not going to be using it, so touting that as the cure all is ridiculous as well as your statement that he should go back to his Palm. If BB wants to compete in the smartphone arena, especially the consumer one, then its is going to have to be less reliant on their BES product and put a little bit more functionality on what most of their newest customers will be using.

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Folks I'm not trying to bash blackberry, nor do I want to pay for an additional email service. I also don't want to change my email address, especially when its with one of the most popular providers. My point is simply that I really do think BIS is in need of an overhaul and should take advantage of technology that is already out there.

I also like the blackberry two hundred times more than the treo, for everything BUT email. As I said, I'm making do with the BIS pop setup, but I'm wondering about their future.

Get a Yahoo account and forward through them it can't be more than $10 a year and you would get instant e-mail. Just spoof the e-mail addy and your recipients will never see a difference.

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I thought about this option as well but it takes me a step backward. Messages edited on the blackberry won't have ANY impact on the gmail account. Ill be getting less synchronization, not more.

I do not know about Gmail as I switched to Yahoo after BIS 2.0 came out. I get instant email and it shows as read on the Yahoo interface. I can also delete from the Bb and have it deleted on Yahoo. THe only step I do not have is getting these things to work on Outlook on the PC but I would need BES for that.

This system works for me.

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You could subscribe to yahoo plus and then you could access via outlook.

I get push email to my BlackBerry from Gmail. Often times I get mail on my BB before is shows up in Outlook. I didn't set it up to use IMAP, I went through the BIS website, entered my address and password and it did the rest.

I have 2 Gmail accounts and 2 Google Apps Gmail accounts on my BB and they all work the same exact way; 90 times out of 100 the mail is on my BB before Outlook via IMAP. Idunno.

Gmail IMAP to Outlook or Thunderbird is nearly instantaneous. My BB is just that much faster.

I'm not debating that the **POP** BIS setup for gmail works instantaneously. This is what I've been using, and it does work. It lacks the following, however: messages read on the BB still show as new on the server; deletions on the server don't delete on the BB. That means that if I'm checking my mail online, I have to go through and mark everything read. Things I delete online I have to back onto the BB and delete manually. This is just annoying... an inconvenience. The system works for its essential purpose, but is not as useful as it easily could be.

With IMAP (using IDLE), the emails are not only pushed instantaneously, but blackberry and webmail are sync'd perfectly, all the time. Trust me, when you've had this, you don't want to take a step back to POP. My treo did this flawlessly, and I can't see why Blackberry wouldn't either.

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Sounds like you should use yahoo. It does all of this except pop from your computer. But marks read, deletes, etc.

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You're right, yahoo does sound like it works better. But I'm not sure why they won't add those couple of features into gmail. I will give it some time before I go setting up a new email address.

You can also use the gmail application on your blackberry. It is not as instant, but if you delete or read, it will update on the web.

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Ok thanks. Sounds like there's a bunch of different ways to get all the features, but no single way.

GMail integration with BIS does not utilize POP protocols. As RIM did with Yahoo, they worked with Google to integrate their PUSH technology into their mail system. I believe BIS 2.5 will unleash the full two-way synchronization between GMail and BIS (so your deletions and read/unread status reconciliations will go both ways). Yahoo is currently two-way synchronization, as mentioned above.

...not to mention that you get your Calendar with these services, which ChatterMail did not do on the Treo. Rumors circulating say that Contacts synchronization will soon come, as well.

...or you could look at the BlackBerry Unite! product for use on your home computer.

jibi,

any idea when 2.5 will release?

Also, I know about google's app for sync but does yahoo have one as well?

Last question, if I have been on BES (personal, hosted), will I be unhappy with everything else?

Thanks.............

After OS 4.5 would be my guess... so perhaps by the end of summer? I rarely dive into the BIS side of the house, aside from a basic configuration of my personal GMail account. I think the trade-off from annual expenses on BES (additional monthly fees for the hosted BES and Enterprise BlackBerry Plan) would leave you more than happy with BIS

...atleast if I had to pay for any of my services, I'd probably feel that way.

For the most part I am there with you on the expenses. On verizon with unlimited minute plan, the cost for BES or BIS is the same. My BES hosting is being paid for me. My challenge is that I am thinking of trying sprint and I could save a total of $55/month if I skip tethering and BES. Hard to resist. But then again, I am a little gun shy on Sprint. I have been very happy with Verizon.

That's the kind of thing I was hoping to hear!!!! Like I said, Blackberry (from my understanding) basically invented/popularized Push email, so they must be aware of the imperfections. Glad to hear there's at least speculation about updated BIS. Contacts and Calendar sync would be absolutely amazing...

I also think it would be amazing if they resolved this issue. I hate checking my email on my phone only to see them AGAIN when I check my Gmail on my computer.

This is a sensible post I think. I have posted before on here that RIM needs to up its game with BIS if it hopes to take a bigger slice of the consumer/prosumer market. Like the OP I used my Treo 650 with Chatter and when I moved to a Pearl with BIS I really missed being able to file messages in folders. IMAP IDLE would be nice, but this was my big bugbear.

I use BIS/OWA at the moment and it works ok, with (albeit sloooow) 2-way sync. This is somewhat of a half-hearted solution as I find it irritating that read message status does not propagate from mailbox-->handheld.

I do understand that RIM doesn't want to cannibalise the BES market, but there must be some way to improve functionality yet segregate and product differentiate things.

I should say that I would love to pay for hosted BES, but for various reasons I have to use accounts on servers which I have no control over and can't be moved off these.

Look, whatever RIM originally designed the Blackberry e-mail system to do, they would be foolish not to change it, this many years later, to suit the demands of both the business world and the consumer market.

When the BIS system was developed, I'm told, it was more akin to a 2-way pager system that allowed you to read email. Fine! But it's 2008 now, and the technology is more than easily accessible to make it so email functionality is full fledged. There is no reason to think RIM doesn't know this!

When I switched from my TMO 8100 to my at&t 8310, I had some email issues (not working properly due to a corrupted messages database and rogue service books) and the at&t customer care couldnt fix it, so they transfered me to RIM support.

I talked with the guy for about an hour (he fixed my stuff in like 10 minutes) and asked him about how the email works on BIS. He explained that I had been getting push functionality out of my gmail ... he called it GIMAP (i think). I asked him if anyone else had this and he said the following have it:

Gmail
Yahoo
GoDaddy

I was like 'GoDaddy?!?!?!' and he said yeah, all email hosted on their systems would push like gmail/yahoo.'

I was looking for hosting a month ago and ended up going with godaddy just for this reason, and it works great.

Yes, I agree. I shudder slightly to write this, but I am seriously impressed with the iPhone's stated integration with Exchange Activesync and also their new Mobile Me service that was announced at WWDC. The problem is I dearly love my BlackBerry, I like the build quality and I can't imagine not having a proper keyboard. However, when my contract comes up for renewal in a couple of months it is looking exceedingly likely I will jump ship for an iPhone.

You are right that RIM must know that BIS needs some work. The way I see it, though, is that RIM are in a rather tricky situation. They know that many small to medium businesses would drop BES and switch to BIS if it offered fully-fledged reconciliation and sync of mail and some form of calendar sync. So, they are stuck with the problem of what to do about this - I can't see a painless way forward here to be honest.

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And you're not the only one who's going to be impressed with the new iphone technology! If its as good as it sounds, I may very well jump ship before my contract expires. I too love my new blackberry though, so we'll see!

You're right, it helps to look at it from their point of view. Blackberry was first and foremost a business utility. They have to find a way to satisfy them AND the rapidly expanding consumer market.

So if RIM would just offer BlackBerry Unite users would have their own personal BES servers handling their critical data and not need BIS at all. I mean the carriers could just charge more for BB Unite customers and reoup their loss revenue.

Possibly, although from what I have seen even Unite! is starting to look a bit shabby now in the face of what we are seeing from RIM's competitors. I think RIM needs to do some serious thinking about how it wants to position itself in the market. This is really going to require them to decide what future they want for BES and, more importantly, what size of business they want to target it at.

For me personally, I see BIS as seriously lagging behind any of their competitors' offerings... So, pretty please RIM - I love my 'berry and don't want to leave it

I would love to hear what setting you have for your emails via BIS. I have a Gmail account, GoDaddy account, and have my work email come to the BB via OWA (via BIS as well). All of them are dreadfully slow! I would love to find out if my set up is bad and see how to fix it to get my messages sooner, as other have stated here.

Also, how do you check to see what version of BIS I am using?

I also have a Gmail and a OWA exchange account going to my blackberry (no godaddy though, can't help you there). I set both of them up in BIS, using nothing unusual.

Procedure...
1. Log into BIS on the web, or on your BB (depends on carrier, mine's Verizon, here's their link (https://bis.na.blackberry.com/html?brand=vzw)).

2. Add account.

3. Follow simple steps... enter email address, password, etc.

4. Make sure the delete reconciliation check box is checked, under options.

5. For gmail, add a filter. Have it set so that if the "From" field contains your email address, messages aren't forwarded to the device (prevents that whole duplicate sent messages phenom.).

This worked well for me... I get messages pushed to my device instantly with gmail, and with a brief delay for exchange owa (not more than a few minutes I don't think). I also seem to get good message status reconciliation for exchange.

By the way, I've reached a harmony with gmail that works so-so until RIM decides to make their integration fully sync'd. I'm using the above setup, and I also have the gmail app (OTA Mobile) installed, but NOT set to notify of new messages. I can receive and delete messages using the BB software, and then once in a while go through them on the mobile app so that they show up as Read on the server. It also helps if you get HTML messages to read them on the gmail app. Not the best solution in the world, but its satisfactory for now. I tried using the gmail app exclusively, but notifications were extremely spotty... sometimes 2 minutes, sometimes an hour +.

I got my hopes up that the new 2.5 version of BIS that is rolling out would provide some new functionality. HTML is great but if I had the choice I would pick better reconciliation and mailbox access to folders etc over that any day.

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2nd on that one! But who knows what RIM might still have up its sleeves...

I did the same thing as Berrymedic20 (including the filter to prevent double sent messages, although that means if i send it from my gmail i dont get a copy on my bb).

As for my godaddy hosted account, i just typed in my email and password into att's blackberry portal (att.blackberry.com) and it auto set everything up.

You guys honestly have faith in RIM? After more than half a year of an OS beta (still yet to be officially released), the most they are boasting is HTML email and you're expecting more? Lol wow.

Any rumours about BIS development?

I've read in a few places that they will have BIS 2.7 (we're currently at 2.5) up sometime around summer 2009... sigh. It IS supposed to offer better Gmail support, that's all I know.
What happened to 2.6? I have absolutely no idea.

I was hoping of something more juicy than better gmail support :(

Gotta love RIM's version labeling. What happen to Device OS 4.3 (8830) and 4.4 lol.

As far as Gmail intergration goes I hope they get it similiar to the way Yahoo is now.

Seriously, it's RIM--since when do they introduce anything revolutionary and/or groundbreaking? I learned to not get my hopes up when it comes to their "updates".

Sounds like a frustrated Windows Mobile user.