Sprint’s Mobile Email service may have been one of the best kept secrets in the world of feature phones. Back in the days before the modern smartphone era, push email was something reserved mostly for BlackBerry handsets. This is because a BlackBerry data plan included access to a server to push emails to your handset in real time, whereas other handsets had to check for new email on regular intervals. This system was both slow and unnecessarily draining on a battery.
However, Sprint’s Mobile Email service offered access to its own dedicated server, which after configuring with your email account’s credentials, would happily push new emails to any phone that was compatible with their client. That client application was actually pre-installed on most of their late model feature phones, as well as Palm OS phones like the Centro. Unlike RIM’s proprietary system to signal its handsets of new email, the Sprint service would actually send a masked text message to the phone, alerting the application that new messages were waiting. By using this ingenious yet simple work around, simple feature phones that sported a keyboard like the LG Lotus could actually function like budget smartphones without needing a special plan.
Even today, where Android and iOS offer their own push services for popular providers such as Gmail, the Sprint Mobile Email system had a leg up on the competition: You could set up virtually any provider, be it corporate email, your own domain, or some obscure ISP — as well as the popular services from Yahoo, Gmail, and others — and have them all push as soon as new email shows up in their server. All that is coming to an end, unfortunately.
Sprint began sending out SMS messages to subscribers of the service with the following text:
SprintFreeMsg: We’re closing down our Sprint Mobile Email service on 02/01/14. Explore your FREE options now. http://sprint.us/EmailEnding
The address shown loads a mobile-formatted page with links to various alternative email clients, mostly specific services such as Gmail and Yahoo. The message comes as a sort of sign of the times. With feature phones on the decline, it likely isn’t worth keeping the Sprint Mobile Email server online anymore. It’s time to let the users fend for themselves. That being said, I wonder how many feature phone users out there will even miss the service after it’s gone.
A lot of us miss it BADLY. Sprint’s mobile email service was great–fast, easy, and extremely easy & convenient to use– whereas the alternatives left on my phone, or the downloadable mobile email services– are SLOW and very inconvenient. Sprint seems not to give a darn anymore about basic phone users, though my monthly bill with a basic phone is $70.00.
While my Sprint Wireless Backup (backs up to a Sprint server my new and deleted contacts within seconds, and works perfectly) for $2.00/month still works, they haven’t offered it on any new basic phone for 2+ years. Imagine losing your phone, or it being stolen or broken, and having to manually input 600 contacts all over again, which is how many I have . . .
It seems Sprint is happy to remove two of the most important things on a cell phone: email and backing up of contacts. What next, removing the microphone and earpiece? The latter is evidently only a matter of time with Sprint, as apparently phones aren’t meant to be used as phones anymore, but something on which to use “apps” and to watch TV, listen to music, take pictures, and navigate your car. Talking on the phone, too? Nope, that’s for the unhip, and Sprint isn’t interested in THEM.
This Feb. 2014 mobile email removal is probably what will cause me to leave Sprint after 13 years as a loyal customer when my contract expires in a couple of months. For basic phone users, they just make it so obvious that they want us to leave if we won’t let them force us into smart phones with the above moves. Until the summer of 2013, they had offered phone plans for $29.99 and $39.99/month, for people on limited incomes or who just didn’t have the money or preference to spend a lot on a phone bill; well, those plans are gone, too . . . nowhere on the Sprint website anymore.
Companies seem to be forever cutting costs, meaning laying off workers and reducing services to customers–who will leave. A monkey could be a CEO who cuts costs, that takes no brains or education. Hey, where are any CEOs with vision, who actually can see how to grow the top line (sales) though innovation, seeing the future of their industry, offering value to customers, and good marketing??? There are few such CEOs anymore.