IPhone not sending POP mail? Here's a work-around.

Question

Like some other people out there, I haven't been able to get the Mail App on the iPhone to talk nice to my POP email host's server. It receives mail just fine, but will not send. I've tried all the fixes I could find suggested out there, and had several back-and-forths with my server host's tech support, and then spent (literally) two hours with an upper level Apple tech trying to get the device and server working together . . . to no avail.
Until such time as my server opens up a new hole and allows easier access . . . or until Apple figures out some way to penetrate the pinpricks that are already there . . . I've come up with a reasonably good work-around that might be helpful for some of the others out there who are having similar issues.
It's a little convoluted, but it's easy to do, and there's no hacking/tinkering . . . so just follow it step-by-step.
1. Create a Gmail Account. Ultimately, you'll be sending your regular POP account mail through their server . . . so you'll need a Gmail Account.
2. Once that's created, there's an option to: "Use Gmail to send from your other email addresses" . . . and we're gonna get that set up now. To do that, log into your Gmail Account. Then go to Settings (at the top-right of screen). Then go to Accounts (the second Tab over). Then, where it says: "Send Mail As:", click on the option to "Add another email address". That'll open up another box that let's you fill in the name and email address of an alternative email account. Put your primary POP email account information here.
3. Gmail will then take you through a brief verification process, to determine if, indeed, you actually have access to the POP email account that you're trying to "spoof". Just follow the instructions.
4. Now, let's fix our iPhone's settings so that our POP account can use Gmail's Outgoing SMTP mail server. Go to your Mail Settings, and select your POP account (assuming you've already got one created that has the Incoming mail part working just fine). Scroll down to your Outgoing Mail Server settings, and either turn off your delinquent primary server and add a new server with the settings I'm about to give you. Or, what I did was, just change your primary server info to the following:
5. Here's the server settings that will work:
Host Name: smtp.gmail.com
User Name: use your full gmail email address
Password: use your gmail password
Use SSL: Turned On
Authentication: Password
Server Port: 587
6. Now, you should be able to send mail from your POP account through the Mail App on the iPhone, using Gmail's SMPT server as a proxy. You can already use the AT&T outgoing server settings in this same way, actually . . . but only when you're on the AT&T network (Edge or 3G) . . . not when you're on a Wi-Fi network.
Truth is, this trick would work even if we didn't do Step #2 and Step #3 . . . but then the email that we sent from the iPhone would have our Gmail Account information in the headers of our sent email, rather than our POP accounts reply-to information. Following Steps #2 and #3 make it appear as though the mail was still sent from our primary POP account.
Hope that's useful for someone else out there, that's been knocking their head against a wall trying to get their mail up and running. I'll post this on a few forums.
All the best --
D

Answer 1

I don't get any pop-ups anywhere nor any menus (if there are supposed to be some). The code is rather messy, also, with all those on-the-fly definitions for styles and endlessly long JavaScript actions. Quite possible that the links override one another. Not to ruin your day, but I'd definitely start from scratch with an empty page and a clean style sheet for the various elements. IMO that's the only way to get this working properly.
Mylenium