Friedbeef’s Tech

Push email technology – is where email is pushed to a phone like an SMS rather than pulled by the phone upon user request.  It is this ability to read e-mail that is received in real-time, anywhere, that has made the BlackBerry devices infamously addictive, earning them the nickname “CrackBerry”.

In fact, the use of the term CrackBerry became so wide spread that in November 2006 Webster’s dictionary named “crackberry” the “New Word of the Year”.

Despite its undeniable success, one of the main issues with the BlackBerry was that it required you to own a propriety BlackBerry phone in order to use the service thus severely limiting its flexibility.

Fortunately, for the rest of us who don’t want to fork out cash for new phones – there are alternatives.  One of which I’ve played with is the SEVEN platform which you can also try by downloading the fully functioning free beta at the SEVEN community site. 

If you’re Malaysian, you can also get a paid version which comes with full technical support from Digi.

What’s good about SEVEN

Here are some of the features which I liked about the new SEVEN platform push email system.

• Easy installation and administration – Setup from scratch took a few minutes for me
• Secure – Supports 128 bit encryption
• Works with Outlook Exchange, Lotus Domino, and other webmail services which support IMAP or POP like Gmail.
• Access to calendar and contacts and corporate global contacts (enterprise edition only – also free for beta)
• Ability to accept meeting requests (enterprise edition only – also free for beta)
• Capability to work offline (then send and receive when online)
• Attachment download process which can resume in case download is interrupted before completion
• Capable of working on a large variety of devices

What needs improvement

• Cannot view HTML objects - Images which were embedded in HTML emails went missing when I read it from my phone.
• Lack of auto-complete for adding contacts to a recipients list- I’ve grown so accustomed to typing in the 1st 3 letters of someone’s name and have gmail or Outlook and having the email address just appear.  Now I’ve got to do it the traditional way and use my contacts list!

Should you switch to push mobile email?

Before you may the switch consider the following:

1. Be aware that if you want to use Gmail with this, the official Gmail mobile software can make use of Gmail specific features like starring, labeling, and grouped conversation threads.  Services like SEVEN cannot replicate this same user experience.
2. Are you willing to get an unlimited data plan for your phone?  Bandwidth usage for services like this would be significant, and you need an unlimited plan or face empty pockets at the end of the day.
3. How much does keeping connected via email mean to you or your business? – given that it WILL take up your personal time outside the home/office.

Recommendations

If you’re a business user: and don’t want to take the risk with a beta system (which works fine – but may be buggy and does not offer professional support), you may want to try hooking up with a service provider and paying a small fee.

That way the more complex setups like hooking it up to an exchange server and global contacts lists can be handled by trained professionals.

SEVEN has a list of mobile service providers you can choose from.  In Malaysia the only player is Digi with their SmartMail offering running on the SEVEN platform and on EDGE mobile infrastructure.  Maxis pulled out a few months ago. 

If you’re a home user: and still want push email, I would try the Seven community beta instead as it is a free, and fully functional and you have nothing to lose by giving it a run out. 

What are your thoughts on mobile push email?  Let us know in the comments!

[tags] mobile, email [/tags]