Thursday, June 2, 2005
The Fragmented View of Windows Mobile Always-On Email
Posted by Janak Parekh in "THOUGHT" @ 07:00 AM
On Tuesday, Cingular announced they're adopting Good's GoodLink technology to provide always-on email on their PDA devices, including the Treo 650 and the Siemens SX66. While this is interesting in its own regard, since Good has been competing with RIM with mixed success up until this point, it also brings up another point: an increasing number of carriers are offering different always-on email solutions with Windows Mobile devices.
For instance, I've had the Samsung i600 Smartphone and the i700 Pocket PC Phone from Verizon Wireless, and they have deployed what they call Wireless Sync, and bundle it with both of those devices as well as other PDAs and Smartphones they sell; it's rumored the i730 will come with it as well. Both of them use what is called "CDMA Dormant Mode", which allows phone calls to come in even when a network connection is maintained. The battery drain in this mode is about 10-15% more than if no network connection is active. The Wireless Sync server is then capable of "paging" the device, which then initiates the sync session. I've used it, and found that the implementation on the i700 was decent. GPRS always-on works similarly as well.
Then there's products like Smartner's Duality. In fact, Geekzone reviewed IntelliSync (which is the underlying technology for Verizon Wireless's solution), Smartner, and a couple of other approaches, so I won't dwell on their mechanics much further.
This is different from the built-in Windows Mobile Server Activesync in several ways -- most notably, these solutions don't use SMS "paging" to wake up the Windows Mobile device to pull email... and this is attractive to people who have to pay for SMS "buckets" of messages. However, by not having integrated Exchange support as Server Activesync does, it's a bit of a pain to deploy... and if a organization has people using devices from different carriers, watch out. 8O Client redirectors are a workaround, but a hassle in their own right. Hopefully, Windows Mobile 5 will live up to its promise and provide a true, standardized push email system via Server Activesync that works, provides good battery life, and makes it easier for both server admins and users. In the meantime, we'll continue to see different solutions deployed by different carriers. If any of you have deployed always-on email, what solution have you used, and are you happy with it?
For instance, I've had the Samsung i600 Smartphone and the i700 Pocket PC Phone from Verizon Wireless, and they have deployed what they call Wireless Sync, and bundle it with both of those devices as well as other PDAs and Smartphones they sell; it's rumored the i730 will come with it as well. Both of them use what is called "CDMA Dormant Mode", which allows phone calls to come in even when a network connection is maintained. The battery drain in this mode is about 10-15% more than if no network connection is active. The Wireless Sync server is then capable of "paging" the device, which then initiates the sync session. I've used it, and found that the implementation on the i700 was decent. GPRS always-on works similarly as well.
Then there's products like Smartner's Duality. In fact, Geekzone reviewed IntelliSync (which is the underlying technology for Verizon Wireless's solution), Smartner, and a couple of other approaches, so I won't dwell on their mechanics much further.
This is different from the built-in Windows Mobile Server Activesync in several ways -- most notably, these solutions don't use SMS "paging" to wake up the Windows Mobile device to pull email... and this is attractive to people who have to pay for SMS "buckets" of messages. However, by not having integrated Exchange support as Server Activesync does, it's a bit of a pain to deploy... and if a organization has people using devices from different carriers, watch out. 8O Client redirectors are a workaround, but a hassle in their own right. Hopefully, Windows Mobile 5 will live up to its promise and provide a true, standardized push email system via Server Activesync that works, provides good battery life, and makes it easier for both server admins and users. In the meantime, we'll continue to see different solutions deployed by different carriers. If any of you have deployed always-on email, what solution have you used, and are you happy with it?
