Why Hast Thou Forsaken Me Google?
In case you missed it Google’s Gmail rolled out IMAP yesterday to the rejoicing of Geeks worldwide. I even wrote a picture guide for setting up Gmail on your Windows Mobile 6 device. I finally had the service added to my main account this evening and quickly went about downloading the last 3 days worth of mail.
Much to my dismay many of my messages were coming up blank! After checking that the messages were in fact not blank I hit up Pdaphonehome to see if others were having the same problem. Indeed the problem of blank messages when checking Gmail via IMAP is widespread.
I was so excited to finally have this basic and overdue functionality on my Gmail account. After all of the resources Google has poured into the cell phone market and the favor shown to the iPhone with this IMAP announcement, I am saddened by the lack of support for Windows Mobile. It didn’t bother me so much once I saw the IMAP announcement because IMAP has standards and I thought that this meant something. You can’t tell me that Nobody at Google has a Windows Mobile 6 phone.
Even if the issue sits in the Windows Mobile 6 messaging client wanting some “optional” part of the encoding I have to place the blame on not adding this bit to the IMAP service, since the devices have been out there and in use.
I am going to be looking for a way to use IMAP on WM6 devices to check Gmail and I will report back if a solution is found.
In conclusion I understand that Gmail is free, without obligation to me, I can get IMAP from other places, but I am selfish and I want this to work.
Does anyone have an email or support request page? The best I can find is Google groups and Suggest a feature. I guess I could Suggest that Google not deliver me blank emails but I am thinking this email would be better sent elsewhere.
Josh Smith is a blogger, database manager and adjunct professor of business and technology. 
I have the same issue. Can you not use pop3 on your phone? I know, I know, its not IMAP - but as a temporary solution I was thinking that pop3 would do just fine…
The problem with pop on Gmail in the past was that if you downloaded it to your phone, it would not then download to your desktop client, and the phone and desktop would never sync. But now, if your desktop is set up as IMAP, it will always be correct and your phone will download the new messages you missed when you left the house using pop. Your phone will never be a perfect copy anyway, you are only downloading the last three days anyway.
Thanks for the pointer. I was looking forward to IMAP on my phone so that I could use IMAP on the go and web client when I am in front of a computer. I’ll just continue to read the mobile version of Gmail in Opera Mobile. It provides an ok experience and we’ll see how it goes until IMAP gets figured out.
Visit:
http://mail.google.com/support/bin/static.py?page=known_issues.cs&issue=gmail_issue_windowsmobilehtml
Its a known issue. Click “Report” so they get to fixing it faster.