Internetworkers: http://www.ibiblio.org/internetworkers/

[Ilan Volow <listboy AT clarux.com>]

When my boss was looking for The Perfect Mobile Device(tm) because AT&T+iPhone kept dropping calls, and I was tasked with setting up his BlackBerry, I found out the hard way that the BlackBerry doesn't respect standard IMAP flags (read, deleted, etc) and that e-mail messages that were read on Apple Mail were not being marked as having been read on the blackberry (like they were when using the iPhone). After looking into it further, my conclusion (right or not) was that BlackBerry was on purpose not playing nice with IMAP, so that you had to spend lots of $$$ for their exchange server tie-in; if you're a completely non-microsoft shop, then you're SOL in terms of the BlackBerry giving a decent mail-reading user experience. Frankly, that sort of thing scares me a lot more than DMCA or iPhone bricking. 

Anyhow, the boss went back to using the iPhone for mobile web browsing plus another phone from Verizon for making voice calls. If there is a way to get BlackBerry to play nice with IMAP that I just didn't discover, I'd certainly like to know what it is.

-- Ilan

On Mar 10, 2008, at 12:27 AM, Jeremy Portzer wrote:

Thomas Beckett wrote:

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----

Hash: SHA1

Greg Brown wrote:

Getting the device to operate on a carrier that works a damn in this area.

Yeah, with all its shortcomings (and the insanely great stuff, too), the

biggest technical flaw in the iPhone is AT&T.

Here in Australia (even further than Charlotte!), I run into people with 

iPhones pretty frequently.  They are not sold here - people buy them 

from eBay or friends in the US, unlock them, and replace the SIM cards 

with a local carrier.   These folks are not necessarily highly technical 

computer geeks either - typically the eBay sellers do the unlocking, or 

local independent phone vendors (since the "unlocking" just breaks a 

US-based contract, and there's no DMCA here, it's not anything the 

authorities care about).

The biggest downside here has been lack of 3G/HSDPA support in the 

iPhone, but that is expected to change with the next major "release" 

(which possibly will correspond with the launch in Australia).  Apple 

may find that it is hard to launch the iPhone locked to a particularly 

carrier, too - the Australian consumer commission or whatever it's 

called looks pretty dimly on this sort of anticompetitive behavior.

Are people in the US that scared of AT&T and/or the DMCA that they 

aren't unlocking the phones to any kind of widespread level?

As for applications, I'd like to see a more native application that 

interfaces with my company email, similar to the way my Blackberry does, 

or the Windows Mobile devices can do.  (Company uses MS Exchange.)  Yes, 

you can check Outlook Web Access through the browser, but it's a bit 

clunky, and from what I've seen, the IMAP access is slow especially 

without HSDPA.  But I don't have a lot of experience using one.

--Jeremy

---

Come and play at the InterNetWorkers Web site!  http://www.ibiblio.org/internetworkers/

You are currently subscribed to InterNetWorkers mailing list

To unsubscribe visit http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/internetworkers

Ilan Volow

"Implicit code is inherently evil, and here's the reason why:"