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Now that you've got an
iPhone and / or iPad, your email app is sure to be one of your most important
tools for staying connected with friends and family while out on the road, or
on the beach.
The major cellular
providers on the Island, Rogers and Telus, have some obscure and hard-to-find
email setup instructions for Apple devices. Shaw, the dominant internet
provider, also fails to give a coherent solution for sending and receiving
emails while outside your home’s wireless network area. Even if you manage
to input the correct credentials, the results are often inconsistent and
generally frustrating.
In my experience, your
best and simplest bet for email on your mobile device is to use a Gmail
account, and filter your existing email through that account. You can continue
to send mail using your regular address no matter where you are, whether at
home, in a coffee shop, or lounging poolside. Gmail is secure, free, accessible
anywhere, and backed by Google, one of the largest, most respected companies in
the world.
Navigate to http://gmail.com and click the sign up button, then
follow the simple steps to create a Google account. Your Google user name will
become your Gmail address, ie., yourname@gmail.com.
Adding your new Gmail
address to your mobile device is dirt-simple. Just type the address into your
mail settings along with your password, and the device will add the rest of the
settings automatically.
Once you’ve created the
address, you can navigate to the Gmail settings menu to allow you to send email
from your existing Shaw, Telus, or any other address. That option appears in
the ‘Accounts and Import’ panel of your Gmail settings. Add your existing
address in the ‘Send Mail As’ option in the list. You’ll have to then confirm
your account via an email that Google will send you.
On the same settings
page, you can also choose to use Gmail to check the messages from your other account,
thus allowing you to keep just one email account on your device. Because Gmail
uses the IMAP protocol, this will help sync your messages across all your
applicable devices, ie., if you delete an email from your phone, that message
will also be deleted from your iMac, your iPhone, and your iPad.
There may come a day
when local service providers catch up with the technology their customers are
using, but until then, Gmail will do just nicely, thank you.
