Set up push email on the iPhone with any email address

Apple's MobileMe service offers push email via a "me.com" email address, but if you want to use your own existing email address with your iPhone, it appears -- at first glance -- that you can only use the inferior email poll service on the iPhone, which downloads emails at set intervals.

But is that really the only way? 

Of course, if your email address is hosted via a work Exchange server your best bet is to call your sysadmin and ask (plead, beg) them to turn on ActiveSync support. If that's been done, setting up your iPhone to use your Exchange email address, contacts and calendar is simple.

iPhone owners who don't have access to exchange, but do want push email will need to do a bit of email juggling to get things working smoothly. Before you begin setting up your iPhone for push email, it's worth noting that you don't need push email on your iPhone. It's capable of checking any regular POP or IMAP email account on a regular basis (the quickest checking schedule is every 15 minutes). However, if you do want push email you'll need to setup a MobileMe account.

Setting up MobileMe is free for sixty days, after which Apple will charge $119/year for the service. Sixty days should be long enough for you to evaluate whether MobileMe works for you. As well as push email, you'll also get the ability to sync your contacts and calendar wirelessly too.

But because MobileMe is the only alternative for push on the iPhone you'll need to tinker with your email settings to make it work for you if you want to use your existing email address.

The way you setup your MobileMe email will largely be determined by the email address you use, and will require you to be able to forward your existing email to your MobileMe address. Automatic forwarding is a commonly available function for most email addresses, but I have found instances where this isn't allowed (Optusnet for example, don't allow automatic forwarding, nor does Microsoft Hotmail). If your email provider doesn't allow forwarding you have two alternatives; don't use push email or change your email address -- and tell your friends to avoid that provider in the future. (After all, it's your data -- why let a company control what you can do with it?)

In this example, I'm going to assume you've got a bigpond.com address. Setting this up for push mail will require that you set your bigpond address to automatically forward to your me.com address. You'll also generally have an option to save messages on the server after they've been forwarded. If you do, I suggest turning this off so your other mailbox doesn't fill up.

Once you've set up the forward, all your messages will begin appearing in your MobileMe account, and you should be receiving them as soon as they appear on your iPhone. You'll need to setup your MobileMe account on both your computer and iPhone. On your computer (Mac and Windows), MobileMe is an IMAP account which is convenient, as it means if you delete or file a message on your iPhone it will automatically be filed on your computer, and vice-versa.

But wait... there's more

Receiving messages is the easy bit. If you want to continue using your existing email address you'll need to make some changes to the way your iPhone sends messages.

By default, when you setup MobileMe on your iPhone it automatically sets the outgoing SMTP server to smtp.me.com. This is actually pretty convenient because it means that any mail you send from the iPhone will show up on your computer too. But the downside with sending through smtp.me.com is that your outgoing mail will come from your me.com email address. If you decide not to keep subscribing to MobileMe in the future, you'll have to tell a whole lot of people not to reply to old messages from you, and instead use your other mail address -- not cool.

Luckily, iPhone 2.0 supports multiple SMTP servers for mail accounts, and if you use an SMTP server that doesn't require authentication (like the one your mobile phone telco provides) you can use any 'send from' email address. If you're not sure of your telcos SMTP server consult this list.

But remember, if you use your telcos SMTP server to send while connected on the cellular network, you'll also need to add in an SMTP server appropriate for the Wifi networks you connect to.  iPhone is smart enough to keep trying multiple SMTP servers until it finds one that actually works. (To add an SMTP server simply click the 'Add Server...' button in the SMTP settings.)

If you're using a Gmail address (or an email address hosted via Google Apps) you're also in luck, as setting your SMTP server to smtp.gmail.com and using your email address and password will cause all mail to be sent with your Gmail (or Google Apps) address -- and this works regardless of what network you're on (cellular or WiFi).