I’ve been writing a new application I’m calling vMail. It’s a J2ME application that lets you manage your IMAP email on your MIDP 2.0 compliant phone or device. In people speak that means if you have a fairly recent phone that runs Java you can use vMail to check your mail on the go.
Today I finished the first version that I’m going to call an Alpha and let people start playing with. You can install it on your phone by browsing to http://vonnieda.org/vMail/vMail.jad on your phone. It should start to install automatically.
The application should be pretty self explanatory but there are a few notes. Even though you can select POP as a server type it doesn’t work yet. It will in the next release. For now it’s IMAP only.
When you delete a message it is deleted from the phone but not immediately from the server. The next time you “Check Mail” it will be deleted from the server as well.
On the setup screen there is a field for profile pin. You can ignore that for now. Eventually you’ll be able to store all your mail settings on vonnieda.org with a little form and then enter them all just by entering a short number instead of typing all that stuff in on your phone. The code for that all works but I haven’t made the page on vonnieda.org yet that will let you create your profile.
So, check it out! Give me feedback!
This version will expire on Sept. 6th so don’t be surprised when it stops working. By then I hope to have the final version available on this site. Be warned, I think I am gonna sell this, instead of making it open source. It’s gonna be cheap though. I am thinking like $4.99 for a forever license. Too high? Too low? Let me know.
A few things I already know about:
- There needs to be more commands on the Read Mail screen. For reply, forward, delete and so on.
- Go on the Read Mail screen doesn’t yet work. It will let you go to URLs embedded in the message eventually.
- Long emails will crash the application. Long is greater than the amount of memory you have available.
- Sometimes the local message store gets corrupt and has to rebuild itself. That just means it will have to redownload your mail. I’m not sure why yet.