Before you get a BlackBerry
There are a couple of gotchas in using a BlackBerry that I think people should be aware of, especially in light of the onslaught of devices from RIM the last couple of months. People often ask me if the latest BlackBerry device is "better" than another device (usually they’re comparing it to an iPhone) and like anything else it really depends what you’re going to do with it.
What not a lot of people are aware of however, and where the BlackBerry really falls on its face, is email!
If you’re an Enterprise user with Exchange servers and you spend all day staring at Outlook, the BlackBerry is a fantastic tool. It does wireless sync with your email, Calendars, Address Book, and what you see on your BlackBerry is what you see in Outlook. It’s great!
But if you’re not an enterprise user, or you instead opt to support open standards like IMAP because it’s a better decision for you and your organization, you may be surprised to know that the BlackBerry takes an immeadiate nosedive in value.
You see, if you don’t invest thousands of dollars in software and more in hardware, you can’t do things like wireless sync of Contacts, Appointments, or email. Sure, you can outsource all of your email to a third party and let them juggle Exchange, BlackBerry Enterprise Server, policy edits, and provisioning, but that isn’t always an appropriate decision either. If you don’t use a BlackBerry Enterprise Server (BES), you need to use BlackBerry Internet Service (BIS), which has some big limitations.
First and foremost, it doesn’t know know how to access your email folders.
That’s right! A BlackBerry using BIS will not be able to view, save to, browse, or give you access to any mail folders you have stored on the mail server. It is for this reason alone that many people don’t like using the BlackBerry, even though this limitation is something they don’t tell you about. The BlackBerry cheerleaders will tell you that it’s simple to fix, just simply migrate all of your email from your server to an Exchange Server! And buy a BES! Or move all of your email to some third party that specializes in locking you into BlackBerry email!
Reduced to its most simplistic explanation, your desktop computer doesn’t know if you’ve read an email or not, and since you can’t do any Folder operations, you can’t use your BlackBerry for email triage and filing mail to the archive folders, or sorting messages however you choose to do it on your desktop or notebook computer.
No thanks.
Gmail users however will appreciate that there is a Gmail application for the BlackBerry that is very good. The only problem is that it only talks to Gmail of course, so you’re in the same limited group with no access to your own email except through that party. The Gmail access is only "wysiwyg" in the Gmail application however, and not if you opt for mail delivery via the BlackBerry push system. Kind of defeats the purpose of having one inbox to work from, no?
BlackBerry is great mobile email for people that use Exchange, but it is severely limiting to you if you don’t, and adds even more cost on the back end to get access to basic features, such as folder access. If you are using a BES you get full wireless sync, contacts and calendars, and other features to bring the mobile PIM experience up from simple email transactions, but accessing an email folder is apparently "enterprise-only" as a feature to RIM.
The new T-Mobile and Google Android venture and the iPhone have given some great options for mobile email. Even Nokia S60 devices that have been coming out lately do a great job with IMAP. Personally I’ve been very happy with the iPhone but I’ve always got my eyes open for something that could address the iPhone’s shortcomings as well.
More on that another day.
But be careful what you’re buying from RIM and be aware that it is no longer as simple as "mobile email = BlackBerry". We’ve come an awfully long way in the last 12 months and I’m sure the best is always yet to come.