Instant emails notifications without using data connection

[Wingzfan]

Sorry if someones already went this route, I couldnt find it. While trying to get notified instantly when a PS3 went for sale on craigslist I tested out a way to achieve this and not kill my battery. Anywho, I use a comcast email address and Im sure it works the same for most email addresses. All I did was forward my comcast mail to my sprint sms email address and leave a copy of the email on the server. Heres the steps:

1. Go here and get your sms email address - http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/email-to-sms/
2. Log into your email account thru your web browser and setup up email forwarding to your sms email address but leave a copy of the mail on the server.
3. The second the server gets an email you will get a text message with the sender showing the email address of the mail sender and the text body will show the subject and fist 160 characters of the email.
4. If its an email you want to fully read you'll have to open your email inbox on your phone and send/receive your emails. (This is why you need to leave a copy on your server).

Basically what this does is allow you to shut off the automatic send/receive at specific intervals and not use the data connection until you have an email you want to read. This drastically increased my battery life.

[speck]

I do something similar:

I don't want all my office emails going to my phone, so I set up rules in Outlook:

1) Certain emails, I only need to know they have arrived, the content (other than the subject line) isn't important (for example, a particular job is finished). These I have set to forward the email to my phone number 5551112222@messaging.sprintpcs.com. This just sends a text message to my phone, and the subject line is generally all I need to see.

2) Others I need to see the email itself. These I also send to my phone number so I know about them, plus I forward the email to a gmail account I set up specifically for this.

I have the gmail account setup on my phone to send/receive manually. Now when I get a text message about an email I need to see, I hit send/receive on the account. If I need the attachments, I can choose to have them downloaded on the next send/receive (which is immediate) - or I can get them later or not at all.

This has worked out really well for me. I've gotten pretty good at Outlook rules, and set up temporary ones whenever I need them.

[mikey1234]

thanks much wingzfan