Want push email on your iPhone? No problem
Well, kind of. How ’bout your email application checking every 5 minutes instead of the minimum 15 minutes? Want it faster? How about 2 minutes? That’s what we’ve been able to figure out with the help of Arminius2. In this simple step-by-step guide you’ll be on your way to fake push email heaven! That BlackBerry is looking worse and worse… Full instructions with pictures after the jump!
First, you’ll need ssh installed on your iPhone. We use Terminal, but this method will work for anyone using a SFTP client. You want to copy the com.apple.mobilemail.plist to your computer. Be aware that in order for this to work, you will have to have auto-fetch on already and not set on manual. The .plist is located in /var/root/Library/Preferences/
Once the .plist is copied to your computer, you’ll need to use a Property List Editor (.plist) to edit the file.
In the .plist you will see the "AutoFetchInterval" at the top. Simply double-click this value.
Then, just change the value to anything you want. It could be 10 minutes, 8 minutes, 1 minute — you get the idea!
Then all you have to do is replace the existing file on the iPhone with your edited .plist. That’s it! You’re so hip you can feel it!
Quick note: this will remain active on your iPhone and you should experience no issues but, there is a but. If you go into Settings/Mail on the iPhone, it will reset the .plist and your changes will be lost. You can feel free to go into Settings and change anything else, just don’t go into the Mail section or this will be undone. That’s it! Let us know how it works for you. We got ours set to 2 minutes and don’t notice a big drop in battery life, if any!
IMAP IDLE does effectively sit there waiting for messages to fall into the mailbox and then they are pushed to the device in a bent pipe manner. This is how the SE implements push.
My word use of ‘fake push’ perhaps was not proper, however. It is just a different implementation than Blackberry’s method.
THe Iphone doesn’t do this though, it’s most definitely a pull method. They’re just accelerating the cycle time between prods of the mailbox by the looks of it. I see no way that this wouldn’t drain the battery, especially with the setup time alone for the EDGE connection.
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Actually the first shot of the iPhone nano running blackberry connect for it’s real push email. Thats an idea!
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test5477 “actually my BIS takes 15min with Blackberry. Yahoo and Gmail are true push but those are not my main accounts. So if you have BES then yes Real push > pseudo Push but if your in my shoes then at its best its the same, with this its better.”
BIS is push with Gmail and Yahoo however other sources it checks every 15 minutes until there is an email. When it finds and email it checks every three minutes to keep a conversation going quicker. When it hits a 15 minute period with no messages it returns to it’s 15 minute cycle.. Pretty Neat.
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yes I’m very much aware of the timing of BIS as I have been on it for over 3 years
My point is that on BIS its on a 15 Min cycle
unless you use yahoo or gmail
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I think it’s time for Apple to buy RIM and they we have the perfect marriage of form and function. I’m sure Jobs has a few billion available to spend as long as he beats Microsoft to the punch.
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I think y’all are taking this post a little too serious…put down that glass of Haterade. Any one will tell you the difference between real push email, and just a timed AutoFetch. I even said "Well, kind of" because it is not actual push. It was more of an article for those toting iPhones that didn’t want to wait a whole 15 minutes and speed that up. In regards to battery life, of course it will drain your battery faster, but my comments are true after testing this for 2 full days I can safely say my battery has not taken a huge hit. I guess that’s a testament to the iPhone’s great battery…
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Considering how narrow everything at Apple is (short of their OS, which still only runs on Apple hardware), Apple acquiring RIM would be a travesty. It would be better if Palm acquired them, all things considered.
Microsoft feels they’re an amicable competitor to RIM. It wouldn’t make a lot of sense to buy your competition if you think your product is better…
I’ll be selling my iPhone as soon as I get a new back and antenna cover for it. It was a very bad 3 day love affair, and I mostly got it just to do the hardware unlock for a fun project. Without support for Bluetooth PAN or DUN, A2DP, Push Messaging (aside from Yahoo), Tethering in any form, and no MMS, that alone is reasons why it isn’t the device for me.
I told a good friend of mine (who loves his) that the iPhone would be great, if I hated cell phones. I do seriously believe that.
There’s no iPhone love from me really. I do have admiration for the hacking and 3rd party software communities however.
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BoyGenius - The problem is that it says “Want push email on your iPhone? No problem”. If you had said “Want to get your e-mail on your iPhone faster?”, that would be different.
No problem? Oh yes it is a problem, one that wasn’t solved by the article. There’s still no push outside of Yahoo available on the iPhone. I don’t think even .MAC can push directly to the iPhone.
Some people outright would never own or will always hate on the iPhone. That’s how it goes. However, there are many of us who would like to see a better product, which I think is a lot of the people posting here, some of us which would never buy the iPhone but still would rather it be a better product.
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People, people, there’s no need to yell at him for this. Come on its just faster push e-mail on your iPhone. It’s nothing like a BB.
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I’m not yelling at him.
The point is that it isn’t Push.. It’s faster Pull e-mail, it’s faster e-mail on an iPhone, but it isn’t faster Push email.
Those of us who have ever used a BB or any other Push capable device know the difference.
I just think the article headline is misleading.
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WinMo ActiveSync > Blackberry & iPhone… HANDS DOWN!!
– Proud Sprint Mogul Owner
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porche I know the timing of BIS as Ive been on it for over 3 years
My point is that BIS checks every 15 Min for accounts other than yahoo
and gmail. Much different than BES and its instant push, I think most
Non BB user don’t know the difference
so you throw the difference between BIS and iPhone for email and its
not that bad
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What a surprise for an a-hole Porsche owner to post that tripe.
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Just to clue you guys in, the the less important you are…the faster you want your email.
The President of the United States…uses no email at all.
President of Fortune 500 Company…3 times a day.
Traveling Carpet salesman…every 15min.
The Big Titty Teen Sweety Girl who hands me my Towel at the gym….every 5min.
The pimple face junior high geek praying Mary Rottencrotch will go with him to the dance…always on instant encrypted “push”!!!
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I see a major problem! there is no plist editor for linux or windows!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! and mac s are gay!
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I don’t know why you aren’t realizing that in most areas, you wont be able to receive ANY phone calls if you have your iPhone connecting to EDGE constantly…
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i don’t have phone service on my iphone! i don’t care about getting calls
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Mary Rottencrotch! Ha!!
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I dont know if it’s just me, but since the 1.1.1 update, I can get get Yahoo PUSH to work and also send from a different email address. right now i have my gmail forward to yahoo (which pushes to my iphone), and when sending from that yahoo account on my iphone, it uses the gmail address.
which is exactly what i did with my old blackberry and bes.
to make it work, add your yahoo email account to your iphone in mail setting and do so with normal yahoo email settings. then exit from mail settings. then go back into mail settings, and change the yahoo email address to whatever address you prefer as your sending address.
you’ll still receive yahoo mail, but now you can send from any other address.
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How will this work with firmware 1.1.1? The plist file is quite different.
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actually did it on 1.1.1 and it works totally fine!
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Funny how there are Blackberry users surfing to this article. Wonder if they are dissatisfied with their current phone and just won’t admit it?
Anyway, both phones are great either way. It is only a matter of time before some reliable PUSH email comes to the iPhone.
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Eeeh, I’m totally disappointed. I thought someone finally solved the problem of REAL push on iPhone. And what’s now? The article is top hit in Google Search…
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well guys if you want real push email on the iPhone just open up a yahoo email account which its free, set it up on your iPhone and test it by sending yourself a message from somewhere else, it should take less than 10 seconds to reach your phone. And its all free
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Digging this up because I think it needs to be pointed out how wacky some people are.
What the hell is the difference between having the phone check every one minute vs. having the mail pushed from the server to the device when it comes in?
Like one of the other commenters said, unless you have BES, there’s a good chance that your BIS is delayed 5-15 minutes! I experienced this myself!
Why don’t you center your argument about why the BB is better than the iphone on something logical like the convenience of the aggregated message inbox (mail, sms, mms)…
I really loved the pearl and 8800 i had… swore by them… got the iphone and i love the phone. The bb has slightly better messaging due to the aggregated inbox… that’s it!
I type just as fast on the iphone now, the screen is way better, the bb can’t compare as far as multimedia apps are concerned, the web browser on the iphone is WTF amazing, did i mention the screen is amazing?
That’s my non-retarded .02 on what matters… not some nonsense…
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