Smart Phone Here I Come...

[hanson]

Shackbash will love this...

So I recently went on a little mission of simplifying my life a bit. I ditched my personal Blackberry Storm that I had for 2 years for a basic voice only flip phone through Verizon. Was living the life man!! Loved not having that thing beeping at me with new messages every couple minutes. Loved it!! Phone bill was half price too! Loved it!!

So the boss man talks to me yesterday and says he wants me to have a company phone. I'm thinking I just got rid of that F'n thing. LOL! We've got a timing problem now as there will either be a major upgrade charge for a new phone or a cancellation charge to get me out of my contract. Not really a concern of mine, we'll work that out.

What I am wondering is the Droid platform business friendly?? Everyone has BB Storm 2's right now at work and I want to be the guy to mix things up a bit. Bottom line is I need my Microsoft Outlook business e-mail sent to the phone like a Blackberry would do. I really have no idea what the Droid's are capable of but know lot of you guys love the things. I really can't imagine they couldn't do this.

Any help? Thats what I'll ask for or it'll be a new Blackberry.

[LMITOUT]

Do you have an IT guy? He may have more input on the decision than you do. Hate those IT guys.

[upnorth]

Droids will connect to Exchange(Microsoft Email server) servers, just in a slightly different manner. Many places have a Blackberry server on site that manages the Blackberrys connection to the Exchange server.. Droids work more like an iPhone where the device makes a direct connection to the exchange server using https, which Exchange is setup to do. All that really needs to be in place is a hole through the company firewall allowing https to the exchange server, which you would have in place already if you have Outlook Web Access from the web.

[MN Mike]

The Droids will pull your Exchange ( I assume you guys use MS Exchange for Email ) information, it uses Outlook Active Sync and it's pretty much instant just like the Blackberry Enterprise Server, Emails, Calendar and Contacts will be updated but I am unsure of Tasks ( if you use that ).

If you're thinking of going with a Droid, your I.T. person will want to run a Exchange Remote Connectivity Analyzer, it's a Microsoft HSOforum that will test the connectivity to your exchange server from the outside so the Active Sync will work properly. The Droids plug into your regular email accounts ( yahoo, hotmail, gmail and a ISP ) pretty easy but when it comes to corperate email, it's a different animal.

I personally don't have a smartphone but the folks that have had the Blackberry's and switched to the Droids say that the corperate email of the Droid leaves a little bit to be desired compared to the Blackberry, one guy wants to dispatch is Droid ASAP and get back to the Blackberry.

I've got 3 networks running the Blackberry Enterprise Server and they have all stuck with the BB's.

Mike

[hanson]

Do you have an IT guy? He may have more input on the decision than you do. Hate those IT guys.

We do. But he's on an on-call basis and we just contracted with him a few months ago. We're a really small firm so its sort of like the wild, wild West.

I'm really going to have to present a good argument to be the only employee without a Blackberry and I'm not quite hearing that yet.

LMITOUT, you have a favorite Blackberry right now?

[LMITOUT]

I went over to the Android side for my personal cell, but using a BB for work. I'm guessing you're on VZ so the top of the line would most likely be the Bold. Lot of people like that phone. The Storm 2 is old technology now and unless you really liked using it, I'd look at something newer.

[DTro]

The ONLY thing I can think that I miss about my BB is the battery life.

I can't speak about corporate IT interwebs, but I have had ZERO issues with my personal GMAIL on the Android platform.

[pureinsanity]

At my company we are slowly converting everyone to android for business from blackberry. If you are a small firm you most likely do not have an exchange server, but I could be wrong. A small firm to me is less than a dozen employees. Either way you can sync your droid up to your email.

There are a few options to sync your phone with outlook.

Depending what you need and how your company works.

Here we have a CRM software called goldmine to keep track of contacts, notes, referrals, ect ect. If anyone is familiar with a CRM you know what I am talking about. We also use outlook for email. We have our email going to our phones, and we usb sync our CRM software using companion link.

Anyone who had a black berry and had to sync probably is familiar with this software.

On the android side its called Dejaoffice in the app market.

Another option and the cheapest is to sign up with google apps. Google apps mocs an exhcange server. You are able to use your email, share your contacts, calendars easily. We are currently looking into google apps now instead of spending thousands of dollars to purchase an exchange server.

[pureinsanity]

Just so you know too Gmail and Email are two different things. As Gmail is technically made for this phone its going to work with ease. However, so far with setting up a non gmail email account has been really easy!

[upnorth]

Normally Outlook is connected to an exchange server somewhere. The 2 go hand in hand. But that is normally, you can connect it to most anything but calendar, tasks etc work best with Exchange.

[pureinsanity]

Normally Outlook is connected to an exchange server somewhere. The 2 go hand in hand. But that is normally, you can connect it to most anything but calendar, tasks etc work best with Exchange.

That is somewhat true. I guess on the basis of say a web hosting company they need to use some type of exchange server to run peoples email I am assuming.

[upnorth]

A lot of places that run email hosting use Exchange as Outlook is kind of the standard in the business world. I have worked at three places and know colleagues all over and in the last 6 years have yet to talk to anyone running anything but exchange.

[Shack]

Amazingly Hanson was the first I knew who truly had a smartphone. Also he was the one who got me hooked on having to have a smartphone.

We would have had the Storm verses the 3G back in early 2009 because of Hanson having a phone that could get onto HSO via a browser in a middle of a lake out in Mich. The IT guys at our work even backed me on the Storm. Guess what? After a vote, the owner ruled in favor of the iPhone 3G.

The IT staff had to do a bunch of work at our MN location, but what the owner wants, the owner gets.