Gmail on my Blackberry

Aparently, it's extreemly easy to add external email accounts to you BlackBerry and many of you will think I'm out of it for posting this. But I am and yes, I am out of it. I started this post sitting on my couch procrastinating before my 4 mile run at 5:30 in the morning...

Previously, I had only used my BlackBerry for what they refer to as "corporate email", which I guess is an accurate term. I've always been using the enterprise service which means our company has a BlackBerry Enterprise Server (BES) that bridges our Exchange server with BlackBerry's service. I guess there are a lot of BlackBerry users that are in situations without such infrastructure or have a BlackBerry for personal use, so being able to use Yahoo, Google, HotMail or any other free email service is vital.

Anywho, here are the easy steps as performed by me on GMail and my Sprint Blackbery 8703g. Your results may vary. (I used this article when going through it originally)

1) Go to Gmail, login and enable POP on your mailbox (Settings -> Forward and POP).

2) On the Blackberry, go to "Email Settings" on the main menu

3) Set up an account if you haven't already

4) When asked for email address enter your Gmail email address (i.e. somebody@gmail.com)

5) Enter your Gmail password (twice for verification)

Now you'll see a new icon just to the left of your main Messages icon that's a globe with a letter behind it. Your Gmail messages will arrive there, but for some reason, I get them in both my main bin and the Gmail bin. That's a bit annoying, but I'm sure it's just a setting somewhere.

It took about 40 minutes for me to start receiving messages after completing the initial setup. You can send mail as well. The delay between a message in your Gmail box and on your device is in seconds, not minutes, so it's very functional.

Anyways, I know people have been doing this for years, but it was interesting to me. Oh, and I did my 4 miles, but man is it humid outside. No more cotton shirts for my runs.