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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
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