Notices

Don't think so, would love Profimail, but alas that won't happen. Built in email app isn't very good.

I do have a rather good suggestion that may help you with more than just this one question...

...please search before making a new thread. This topic has been discussed numerous times before, and you'd have better chance to learn more from them than creating a new thread; asking everyone knowledgeable about the topic to repeat what they may have already posted before.

The thread "mail client" with three posts has been merged into this thread.

So what's the status with IMAP e-mail on large mailboxes? I just got my N900 and I was very disappointed that with IMAP enabled (I have my own IMAP server) and set to update every 15 minutes the battery barely lasted half a day. Granted, I have a pretty big mailbox, almost 1K messages in Inbox and a very large folder structure, but still... This is supposed to be an Internet device.

What options are available? In the default client (Modest - how aptly named) I still don't see options to limit folder subscriptions, limit number of downloaded mails, restrict to downloading headers only etc.

hopefully the next firmware update will do some good in this area.
But i have to say that i am not really optimistic

It seems that writing a good IMAP email client is very difficult.
The N900 is as in internet device good in Web and IM but Email is really lagging behind and that are the 3 things you do the most on an internet device.

If only the gmail mobile app (written in java) would work on the N900 that i used on the E90. then at least gmail would be usable, but also that is something that i lost when moving to the N900

Hopefully the IMap client will be improved in the coming times, like imap idle, sent box support, much better (configurable) ui, fully configure stuff like download X number of emails, download X number of headers per folder. Monitor only folders A and B, Searching (online imap search or offline)

And if we take it to the next level, integrate email more into contacts just like IM and SMS....

Very disappointing, I'm already starting to regret voting with my wallet for Nokia/Maemo. I wanted to stay away from Apple (iPhone) and Google (Motorola Droid). You know, do the right thing, choose a real Linux solution... just to discover that something marketed as an Internet tablet can't do IMAP properly.

be careful with word properly. I bet that for many things imap works by standars. Problem might be that servers imap do not work by standards. I know that end users should not give rats *** about definitions or how something really works. Just vote by selling and then buying stuff that fulfills their need.

imap subscription is probably handled by server side. Do not ask. Google here.

Imho modest is nice example of software that should not have been installed at all as default software. It's just basic example app that shows emails are possible on this device.

I'm not discussing if Modest is following standards or not, I'm talking about its utterly lack of features - and I'm talking really about very basic features here, like limiting what and how much is downloaded. Kind of a "duh!" for a mobile device, really. Even my old Nokia Symbian phone can do it better.

Again, this was sold as an Internet device and Nokia tried to convince us that it can do Internet better than others. "Look! Proper browser with Flash! Nice!". Nevermind that we don't have a decent mail client.

I call this lying by omission.


Oh, and one more thing: the "maybe in the next release" cliche is getting so tiring...

basic feature is subjective but yeah still.I do not know what people have used before this device but you can go to brainstrom section to check out what kind of features people would like to have. For me too many of those brainstroms include pretty basic functions of 2009-2010 device. It just makes me happy and sad :| I'm happy that i'm not demanding or expecting too much but on the another hand..yeah its step 4/n+1 meh.

ok end of rant. Try claws mail from testing/devel.

Well, at least you can always go grab some of the greater debian software using easy-debian.
The easy-debian installation comes with icedove (rebranded mozilla thunderbird) by default. It's not optimized for such a small screen space, but it works, at acceptable speeds too. You could try one of the other linux email clients too, to see if that suits you needs.
And hey, maybe some day someone will port one specifically to maemo. In the meantime, changing the layout to vertical view might be the most usable screen space wise with ice dove. You'll have to play around with the UI a bit to optimize screen space.

Actually, getting rid of the message pane and just viewing a list of emails helps too. Icedove supports tabs, so double clicking on an email will open it in a new tab.