HTC Hero :: Best Email Configuration - Microsoft Outlook POP3

I'm a proud new owner of the HTC Hero, I have a very specific interest in getting my email 'just so' on my Hero, and I made it work great. I think others may be in this situation so I made some detailed instructions that I thought I'd share in case it helps some people.

First off this is for those who (but not limited to):
1) Use Microsoft Outlook POP3 Mail
2) Want to keep that as your main mail source, but want to receive duplicates on the phone.
3) Want to be able to reply to a message from your phone and have it appear as if you wrote it from your computer.
4) Receive it as fast as possible
5) Conserve battery life
6) Want to use the HTC Mail widget to preview your messages and have a mail envelope icon in your notification bar.
7) Filter spam and other unnecessary messages from getting to your phone

The best way to set up email on an android phone:

Benefits:
- Email pushed to you, so its recieved quicker and preserves phone battery life. I went from about 8 hour battery life to about 27 hours.
- Combines addresses into one neat mail location
- Lets you reply as if you're replying from any of those addresses
- Filters spam and unwanted messages from getting to your phone
- Many mail options in android by setting it up this way. Ability to flag messages, sort messages, etc.
- Lets you view and quickly flip through or delete messages in a widget.
- Eliminates the "on behalf of" statement when sending through gmail.

How to set up:
- get gmail account
- set up gmail account to receive your mail account(s)... as many accounts as you may have.
- set up filters to filter spam, and any regular messages you dont want forwarded to your phone
- set up outgoing smtp servers instead of using gmail's. I use authsmtp.com. they are good and cheap. This will let you send your messages as if they were from your Outlook account and not send it saying from <your gmail address> on behalf of <your address>
- If you have troubles sending, you might want to set your smtp server's option to send as SSL, and do the same in Gmail...then they should talk nicely.

You probably have a bunch of other settings you want to set between Gmail and your Outlook as well. For example, you want to set your Outlook to leave the messages on the server, and then probably delete them after 2 days (so they don't build up eating up hard drive space). Then in Gmail, make sure that that too does not delete the messages from the server, so that if Gmail checks it first, it leaves it there for your main Outlook account to still get. Gmail is very powerful, as is Outlook so go through your settings to make sure they are all set up the way you want. I'm sure I'm forgetting some things you need to do, so take this guide as a starting point.

On your phone...

Menu->Settings->Data Syncronization->Google
- have auto-sync turned off, & background data turned on (for other apps that likely need it)
- shut off gmail syncronization from the settings menu.

- set up microsoft exchange activesync with gmail:
the whole point of doing this instead of just using the gmail app is to do two things:
1) let us use HTC's nice mail widget to preview and flip through messages, and
2) to have an envelope indicating we have new mail up in the notification bar instead of an @ sign that the Gmail App shows.

Also, if you just set it up as POP3 mail (which you could do to achieve the same thing) the mail notifications will be much slower, and it will eat up your battery life. The Exchange ActiveSync will preserve battery life and push mail to you like the Gmail app does. So again the point here is so you can use the HTC Mail Widget (2 points above)

So to set up ActiveSync with Gmail:
email address (all lower case): user@gmail.com
server address (all lower case):m.google.com
domain:<leave blank>
username (all UPPER CASE): USER@GMAIL.COM
password:<your password>

- Probably do not sync your contacts, this can screw up what you already have.
- Schedule as items arrive.

Now you can add the HTC Mail widget to neatly view messages in a widget, and you'll have an envelope at the top when you get new mail instead of the gmail @ sign, save battery, filter out spam and other unnecessary messages from getting to your phone, and other reasons listed above.