A 'What Phone' Plea........

[joust]

OK, here goes. On Orange and its upgrade time. I've been quite happily using various HTC devices for the past 8 years (starting with an original O2 XDA), and am curently using a HTC HD2 with winmob 6.5.

Now the dilemma......these are the things the device must do.....

Contacts/Calendar sync with large corporate Outlook 2003 (e-mail sync not necessary, but could be useful) - all on exchange server
Hotmail access with win live account

I can already rule out an iphone4 as an upgrade, as I would need to change my monthly contract (mine is too good, and has the features I need, i.e. unlimited landline calls, which I cannot lose as i regularly use 1000-1200 per month, plus calls of around 3-400mins in addition, not many texts).

So what to go for? Will Android phones integrate with outlook/hotmail seamlessly, or do I need to look at Win7 mobiles?

Cheers

Joust

 

[RobM]

Hi Joust,

You're asking very similar questions to wsmhustler here: http://www.avforums.com/forums/mobile-phones-pdas/1447738-i-have-dilemma.html

I've answered a few things there and I'm quite lazy, so have a read and see if anything sounds useful to you

 

[joust]

Hi RobM,

Thanks for the link, but i'm still a bit confused......does androind sync with outlook for contacts, calendar and mail? Or am I better with a win7 phone? I've all my personal mail now coming to my hotmail account, so don't really need googlemail......

Cheers

Joust

 

[RobM]

The best way is to configure your phone, be it Android or Windows Phone 7, to talk directly to you Windows Live and miss Outlook completely. The end result is the same - emails are delivered to your phone - but the difference is it's done in real-time, rather than relying on you connecting your phone to you computer and synchronising it with Outlook. Same applies with contacts and calendar, they too can be synchronised directly with Windows Live. You may need the 'Pro' or whatever the enhanced version is called, to enable the Exchange ActiveSync functionality if you don't already have it.

All the current smartphone operating systems can do this. Some are tailored to suit one provider better than others (Android for Googlemail, Windows Phone for Hotmail/Windows Live) but they can all receive email from Hotmail.

One thing I would say, is with Android it's fantastic with Googlemail, but has a separate email client for all other email providers, such as Hotmail, which isn't the best client around. It will do a reasonable job, it will get your contacts and calendar also, but you wont get as good experience with Hotmail as you would with Windows Phone 7, or even the iPhone.

All of your priorities seem to be based around information synchronisation with Windows Live and for this, I don't think you'll find a better experience than Windows Phone 7. Just take the time to read into WP7 first though, as it is a new operating system, it has a lot to offer and lot you'll love, but also lacks some functionality compared to the more established boys in this game.

 

[joust]

Thansk for the reply Rob, but maybe we are talking at crossed purposes. The sync I really need is with my major corporate Outlook account, this is currently done with activesync on Win6.5, and very well to. I then use the built in hotmail client on the phone to access my personal hotmail account for all other uses. I don't use outlook at home.....I don't sync my work mail, and wouldn't consider to get it directly from the corporate exchange server, as working for the companies I do, their security policies are tightly controlled and strict. Fortunately for me, as I do lots of development work with different SW programs, I have administrator access to my laptop, so within reason can install suitable apps on it......

So, can I sync android with my corporate laptop, or am I better staying with win7?

 

[RobM]

OK... that makes more sense. In that case, your options are somewhat more limited as not all operating systems or manufacturers offer desktop clients. You do have a couple of options though...

1) Find a platform that does offer local, desktop sync via a client of some sort. Windows Phone 7 offers Zune, iOS offers iTunes, Blackberry offer Blackberry Desktop and all can sync locally to Outlook. Android support depends on the manufacturer, but very few offer anything like this. HTC did at one point, but not so much these days and handset support is weak. It's all about The Cloud.

2) Synchronise your local Outlook data to an online source and then connect your smartphone to that. For instance, there are a few clients that will Sync' your local data to Googlemail, which you could then connect to via your smartphone.

On point 2, while you may have local Admin' rights to your laptop, I would honestly and definitely ask your personnel or IT department about doing this first. I would be surprised and a little worried if there wasn't some sort of IT policy that forbids you from copying company data to an external source without their knowledge.

My advice... go and do some reading on Windows Phone 7