MMS enabled phone+Mobitel+Gmail means cheap or almost free E- Mail

I got a new phone , ADSL is back and after a long time.... deeps is back into the blogging business!

So, as any person (like me) would do I was showing off my phone to the uni friends through out the last week.!!

Some were amazed at the way I manage email free or almost for a very small fee like 50 cents with the mobile phone.

This post goes to all of them who wondered seeing my phone's message inbox full of emails

Its a simple task. (The required settings may change according to your phone model. I'm referring to Nokia 6120 classic. However, if you need any help, add a comment stating your problem)

1. Set the MMS settings of your phone

Mobitel MMS Settings :

*Connection Name - Mobitel MMS
*Data Bearer - Packet Data
*Access Point Name - wapmms
*User Name - Leave it blank
*Password - Leave it blank
*Authentication - Normal
*Homepage - http://192.168.50.165

2.Set the Access Point for MMS as Mobitel MMS

3. Change the MMS settings of your phone to Automatically Receive MMS

4. Go to Gmail--> Settings --> Forwarding and POP/IMAP

5. In the Forwarding section select "Forward a copy of incoming mail to" and set the Forwarding Email Address as @mms.mobitel.lk --Example-->> +9471637****@mms.mobitel.lk

6. Select what you want Gmail to do after forwarding the Email. My advice is to select keep Gmail's copy in the inbox

That's it...a simple plan...now your Mobitel phone is a free real time Email receiver!

Some of you might wonder why i was referring to Mobitel and Gmail particulary. The reason is that Mobitel Incoming MMS messages are free and Gmail provides us the facility to forward all the Incoming Emails to another email address. So you can receive your emails free of charge on Mobitel whereas Dialog charges for the packet data usage of Incoming MMS's.

I have been using this for about 2 years and until now, I only Found two cons.

1. It's hard to read forward mails Because most of them have long list of email addresses before the actual email message. Most of the phones say that it cannot open such messages and sometimes my old Nokia 6020 gets stuck. So my advice is not to try to open Forward emails. After all most of the forward mails are of no use right? So, you have the option to filter the messages that you want to be sent to the phone in Gmail To set a filter, go to Gmail--> Settings-->Filters

2. The second short coming is that mobitel does not store your emails in their servers more than 6 hours which means that, you have the possibility of receiving the email as MMS within 6hours from the time which the email originally was dropped in your email inbox. For example, suppose you turn off the phone at 12 am and you receive Mail A to your Email inbox at 12.15am. the Mail B comes to your Email inbox at 7.00 am. You turn on the phone at 8.00am. Then you do not receive the Mail A to your phone because your message is considered to be expired by Mobitel.

But if your phone has a built-in email client (If you have an option called Email in your messages menu, you probably have a built-in-email client), then you can send/receive email without facing the second shortcoming I mentioned. However, the email client method requires lot of data transfers and hense cost money. What I do is receive the mails in the above manner and reply the important mails in the following way which costs about 50 cents (Mobitel)for a text email.

First , you have to get the GPRS/WAP settings from your Service Provider

Mobitel WAP settings:
*Connection Name - Mobitel WAP
*Data Bearer - Packet Data
*Access point Name - mobitel3g or wap depending on your phone
*User Name - None
*Password - None
*Authentication - Normal
*Homepage - http://wap.mobitel.lk (If you wish you can have another one too)

Dialog WAP settings:
*Connection Name - Dialog WAP
*Data Bearer - Packet Data
*Access point Name - www.dialogsl.com
*User Name - None
*Password - None
*Authentication - Normal
*Homepage - http://www.dialogwap.com (If you wish you can have another one too)

Then you have to change the Email settings



1. Go to the Email Menu on the phone--> Add new mail box (The wording might change from phone to phone)

2. Add the mail box settings

For Gmail users:

Incoming Email Settings:
*User name - your email address
*Password - Your Email password
*Incoming Mail Server - pop.gmail.com
*Access Point in Use - Mobitel WAP
*Mailbox Type - POP3
*Security Ports - SSL/TLS

Outgoing Email Settings:
*User name - your email address
*Password - Your Email password
*Outgoing Mail Server - smtp.gmail.com
*Access Point in Use - Mobitel WAP
*Mailbox Type - POP3
*Security Ports - SSL/TLS

3. Add the User Settings
*My Name : The name you give here will appear as the senders name in the mails you
send using the phone
*Send Message : Immediately
*Send Copy to self : if yes, sends a copy of the sent mails to your email
inbox(ie.Google,Yahoo etc)
*Include Signature : activate if you wish

4. Add Retrieval settings (For Mobitel users no need to retrieve mails this way because now we are getting all the emails as MMS to the phone free of charge.However, if you wish,you can activate this too)

Email to Retrieve: Usually there are options to select from. Choose the option which suits you the best
*Headers only - retrieves only the headings of the emails
*Messages and Attachments - Retrieves the full email to the phone
*Size Limit - you can limit the size of the emails to download

Retrieval Amount: The number of emails that you want to download per one
session

5. Automatic retrieval settings: If you are using Mobitel, disable Automatic retrieval. That is how I do and it's fine as you receive emails as MMS. But for Dialog and other users change the settings as you wish

6. Go to Gmail--> Settings-->Forwarding and POP/IMAP

In the POP Download Section-->
*Select Enable POP for all mail(even mail that's already been downloaded)
*Select Keep Gmail's copy in the inbox @ When messages are accessed with POP

In the IMAP Access Section-->

* Select Enable IMAP(see the screen shot above)

when you want to compose a mail, go to the email sub menu on the Messages Menu of the phone, compose the mail and press send..

...enjoy email on the go!!!...