Mobile Email-Getting Email On Your Smart Phone And Tablet

Last Updated: February 16, 2015

Smart Phones like the Iphone,blackberry, android and windows mobile based phones and tablets have the ability to send and receive email.

They usually come with a default email App that can be used for accessing any email account on any email provider.

You can also download and install other email Apps (mostly free) depending on your preferences.

Notes: There are some links to App reviews at the end. I use the terms Apps and clients interchangeably- they mean the same thing.

Service Specific Apps

Email providers like Gmail,Yahoo Mail and Outlook.com provide their own Email Apps that are specifically designed to access their email services

The Yahoo mail App is recommended if you are accessing a Yahoo mail mailbox as it is easier to setup and use, with features specific to Gmail.

The same applies to the Gmail App, the Outlook.com App. They are the preferred Apps when accessing their respective email services.

More than One Mailbox?

If you want to access several mailboxes then all email Apps/clients will allow you to access several email mailboxes.

However the Service specific email Apps like the Yahoo App can usually only be used to access mailboxes from the same service provider.

That is, the Yahoo App may allow you only to access other Yahoo mailboxes.

Standard email Apps (clients) will allow access to any mailbox on any email provider.

You can also use several email Apps/clients on the same device. In fact using multiple email clients is a good way of keeping email accounts separate.

For example, you could use one email App/client for accessing work email and another for personal email.

POP3 or IMAP4 Email Access Protocol

Email service providers provide access to email using the POP3 and IMAP4 protocols.

Most providers support access using both protocols.

IMAP4 is the best choice of email access protocol providing your email provider supports it (most do).

This is because by default IMAP4 leaves the email on the email server, and only creates a copy on the phone/tablet.
See –Understanding Email protocols SMTP, POP3, IMAP4
If you use POP3 then you need to take precautions so that your smart phone/tablet doesn’t delete the email before you have time to read it on your PC.
Note: The Yahoo App and,Gmail App don’t ask you to choose an access protocol.

Setup Information

Typical details that are needed for App setup are:

Display name –The display name can be anything you want and will appear in the from field on your outgoing messages -e.g. contact
SMTP server– This sever is used to send email. e.g. auth.smtp.1and1.co.uk
POP3 or IMAP4 server-This server is used to receive email. e.g pop.1and1.co.uk or imap.1and1.co.uk
Account name – This is your login name to receive email. Often it is the same as you email address e.g [email protected]
Account password -This is your login password to receive email.
Email Address– This is used to set the from address when sending email e.g. [email protected]

Here is a video on how to setup email on Android

The setup on other mobile devices is very similar, and the siteground site has detailed setup tutorials for a variety of smart phones.

Using A web Browser

Using a web browser to access email is common on laptops and PCs but due to the smaller screen sizes it s not used very often on smart phones and tablets.

However if you need to access your email using a friends phone then using the App is not really an option as it needs to be setup and has huge security and privacy issues.

Therefore in these circumstances using the web browser is the best option.

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