Brasinstorm link:

http://maemo.org/community/brainstor...nnection_type/

This is intended to work with POP3 (and maybe) IMAP under Maemo 5.

For people without access to good data plans, SPAM emails can become very costly. Even if it is not SPAM, a typical email with a funny video will use all of your monthly quota of data credits. Moreover, if it is a slow connection, when the systems fetches a large email in the beginning of the list it will prevent you from seeing the others (network timeouts, not enough time, etc).

Another observation: although one can argue about a similar feature existing in some form by using IMAP, for some servers and scenarios (some Internet hosted email servers, for example) IMAP is too slow to be practical.

Some use cases (all for POP3):

1) Using GPRS or some other slow or expensive data plans:
Download only the first X kb (header and some bits). Provide an option to delete it from server or retrieve fully (or maybe more Y kb) next time.

2) Using USB, Bluetooh or Wi-fi:
Download everything, including all attachments

3) Using 3G or 3.5G (not roaming, unlimited plan)
Download everything, including all attachments.

4) Using Edge, 3G or 3.5G (anywhere, basic plan, expensive)
Download only the first X kb (header and some bits, a little more than option1). Provide an option to delete it from server or retrieve it fully (or maybe more Y kb) next time.

Of course, the user is the one who establishes values for each connection if he or she wishes, based on his/her knowledge of available bandwidth and costs. if the user doesn't want to mess with it, leave all options at the reasonable defaults.

There could be still another option for every email that reads "schedule for full download" next time, whenever just a piece of the email was retrieved.

This kind of functionality (limiting download size) is already available at major desktop email clients. It is also available in Windows Mobile 5 and maybe others.

Thanks,
Luis