Send Email the Easy Way

Using the existing mobile messaging infrastructure to send and receive email messages is convenient and fits seamlessly with the mobile user experience.

The easiest way to send and receive email messages is to use the underlying wireless messaging infrastructure. You can use the SMS and MMS clients built into your phone to transport email messages. The tight integration between the message client and the wireless network offers some great benefits from the user's perspective:

It is very easy to use. You do not need to install any additional software or configure anything on the phone or in the email account. It just works.

The incoming messages are pushed to your phone. You are notified with a tone or an on-screen message when the message arrives. There is no need to push the "Check mail" button to check and retrieve messages.

Of course, this approach also has several drawbacks that you should be aware of when deciding whether this is the right way for you to connect to email:

The biggest drawback is that you cannot use your existing email accounts to send or receive messages. Instead, the messages are routed through special accounts provided by the wireless operator.

Although the email accounts and infrastructure are free, you need to subscribe to MMS and/or SMS services, and there might be a per-message charge.

There are size limits for both SMS and MMS messages. You cannot send long messages or big attachments. I will illustrate this point in more detail later in this hack.

The wireless network does not have a service guarantee for SMS or MMS. It might take a long time to deliver a message. The message might be dropped silently if it is not delivered in 24 hours.

Overall, this method works great for casual mobile email users. Now let's check out exactly how it works.

The regular email infrastructure over the Internet also does not have a service-level guarantee. But the wireless data network is less reliable than the Internet. In addition, the SMS traffic is low priority on wireless networks. Also, when an Internet email message doesn't make it to its destination, you will usually receive a failure notification.