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"Nobody wants a mobile email that handles only one email address" - Movamail prepares for launch

Any ordinary phone, as long as it has Java MIDP support, can now be used to handle multiple email accounts, including POP and IMAP accounts, plus Hotmail, MSN, Yahoo! and Gmail, according to Movamail.

It supports most modern mobile phones, says the Movamail site, "including Nokia, Motorola, Sony Ericsson, Siemens, Sanyo, and Samsung."  MIDP, or the Mobile Information Device Profile, when combined with the Connected Limited Device Configuration (CLDC), is the Java runtime environment for mobile information devices, such as cell phones and PDAs.

An early version of Movamail is now available for download on a "60 day free trial" basis. After that, it costs $30 a year, plus any mobile data charges your network imposes.

The data traffic it will generate could have your phone operator smiling. Every time you check your email you will consume approximately 2-4kb of data plus any messages you download. Movamail recommends "several megabytes a month" as the likely payload to budget for.

There are gotchas, some strange: for example, your email name and password can't include certain (unspecified) characters; if they do, it won't work. And you need both WAP (for downloading the application over the air) and GPRS (for downloading and uploading the actual emails) or it won't work "and both must be correctly configured!" it warns.

This is, however, a service, not just an application. It has been discussed under the pre-launch name of Prevoy when first beta-tests started last year, and Movamail says it hopes to sell through mobile operators eventually.

However, at this time, no details were immediately available about which operators might sell the service, if any.

"The vast majority of consumers have 2 or more email addresses," commented the founder recently on the NewsWireless discussion board. "I suspect they do not want to have multiple applications to support each email address."

And this service effectively makes the distinction between feature phones and smartphones invalid, the comment added: "Add your Opera Mini browser, and you have practically turned your mobile phone into a smart phone... or at least smart enough."

Tags: mobile email, Movamail, smartphone, featurephone