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1. Windows Mobile
2. Blackberry
3. iPhone

All three of these options can make use of Push email. Push email is where the email is immediately sent to your phone - your phone does not have to 'synchronize' in order to go get new emails. To be clear, Windows Mobile devices require Exchange 2007 in order for push email to work (I'm not sure about what version of windows is required on the devices).

All three of these options can connect to an Exchange server and retrieve email, calendar entries, and contacts. Apple licenses ActiveSync technology from Microsoft, so the iPhone is able to directly connect to an Exchange server. Windows Mobile devices can also connect directly to an exchange server. Blackberry devices, however, require a Blackberry server in addition to an exchange server.

If you have less than 30 blackberries, you can get their Professional Server. The server is free and you can get per-device licenses for around $80 each. Once you go over 30 devices, you'll need to upgrade to the Enterprise software.

At MTW we have all 3 devices connecting to our Exchange server, and all 3 seem to work fairly well. As for policies, all three can have policies applied to them. All we care about at MTW is a password policy (which forces the user to have a password set on the device) and the ability to remotely wipe / disable a device if it is lost or stolen. All three have this capability.

The blackberry devices have a huge number of policies that can be applied to them, but we ignore most of them.

There are differences in what applications are available for these three different devices. If certain applications are important to you or your users, I would highly recommend researching them to see what will work on what devices. If you want to listen to music or watch a movie, the iPhone is the clear winner. If you need access to corporate data, there are many applications that work with back-end enterprise systems, but most of them target one of the three platforms.

The Blackberry will use the least amount of bandwidth, and the iPhone will use the most amount of bandwidth. This is important if you are paying per-kilobyte for international roaming. Blackberries can be much cheaper on the service costs if you have users that travel abroad.

Which one is most user friendly? That's all a matter of opinion. Those who like Apple computers will likely prefer the iPhone, as it is built on OSX, and those who like having a start menu and control panel will likely prefer windows mobile. I use a blackberry and I really like it.

Which ones can you get software updates for? This one is a pet peeve of mine.

For Windows devices, if you want to get an update, microsoft has to release the new version of the software, then the hardware manufacturer has to add their bits on and release it for your specific phone, then the carrier has to add their bits on and release if for your specific phone. If one of those parties has moved on and considers other phone models more important, it's unlikely you'll be able to get a software upgrade. This really annoys me.

For Blackberry devices, Blackberry gives you the software if you have a maintenance plan with them.

For the iPhone, you get free updates so long as you are on an AT&T contract. Even the old iPhone model got the 2.0 software update recently.

I don't really think any one of these three is better than any other. They all have their advantages and disadvantages.

Any other opinions out there?

Tim Larson
Mission to the World