Nokia Messaging on E71

I was confused months and months ago when I tried to load Nokia Messaging, and it looked just like the old S60 email client. It turned out it wasn't installing back then.

Just yesterday, I installed Nokia Messaging again from the Ovi Store, and it definitely took this time.

I connected it up to my mobile email account (which is sort of hard to tell the settings once it's done), and it seems to be working. It started on reboot, it shows the '@' indicator and new email on the home screen. It seems to be using a hosted middleware layer (which seems unnecessary, but we'll see), and I had to login to the email website to tune a few things. Most notably, I had to wipe the outgoing server settings to get email to send, since my mail server isn't configured to allow just anyone to send.

I still can't see anywhere in the configurations that I'm logging into mail with an account name different from what I publish -- it just feels like too much is hidden. It sends and receives a little slower (the middleware), but I'm hoping that the vast improvements in the UI make up for that.

I've found no show-stopper problems yet, so I've turned off my normal email notifications on the home screen to give messaging room to show its status, and reassigned the email key to the new Nokia Messaging. The old email client is still configured, but it's not set to retrieve email anymore.

Update (23 February 2010): Nokia Messaging seems to talk plain old HTTP to its middleware, so I can now let it use the locked down wireless at work to send and receive email, instead of always being on 3G. That should help with battery life.