I think user multi-tasking was a mistake on iOS. It certainly was a negative for me. I preferred my iPhone under iOS 3.x, the multi-tasking on iOS 4 made the 'phone sluggish and it uses the battery quicker.

Copy and paste could be useful, although I haven't missed it yet.


You are fogetting that htc is historically a Windows phone maker, they have a lot of history building smartphones, more than Nokia, Samsung or Apple. If you look at their top-of-the-line hardware, you can currently buy the "same" phone with Windows Mobile 6.5, Android 2.2 or Windows Phone 7.

WP7 is a great first release, it is probably where iOS 2 or 3 were - although not a surprise, when you consider they have the history of iOS and Android to learn from. It misses some features and it certainly needs some bug fixes, but it is still my preferred phone, over my iPhone and the Androids.

So it is not Nokia turning to the Dark Side, unless you consider all things Microsoft Evil? I do not, even though I am a mac user. For Nokia it was the best option for them, and with Microsoft as a partner they may be able to offer a decent handset with a decent OS.

I wasn't forgetting it but since you mention that's an obvious differentiator - HTC are effectively free to make whatever the heck they like and stick Android on it but the Win7phone spec is more proscribed - there are things which HTC would not be allowed to do with a Win7 phone because they are specifically disallowed in the Win7 spec. There is room for innovation of course, just look at the range of 'launch' Win7 phones, but you'll never have a win7 phone like, for example, the SE Xperia mini. We have yet to see how often MS will update that spec sheet but the smartphone market is a fearsomely fast moving business. Android's inherent flexibility is possibly one of it's strengths. We shall see.

While we're on the topic, endgadget have concept renders of Nokia's initial win7 offering. Lots of caveats of course, but I have to say the black version is a very attractive piece of kit indeed. If they did one with a brushed steel back that would be even nicer .

Jon

I really don't think you can compare iphone and android to BB.

I know those two can do push too (from some providers) but that is not the only advantage of the BB.
BB also has advanced email filtering so I can choose what emails are delivered to my handset and which are not. This means that I don't get emails every five minutes that are not important, like newsletters and adverts. When I get email on my BB I know it is important one so I pick up the phone and read it. From what I understand, iphone or android doesn't not enable this kind of filtering, at least none of my friends know about it...

Every time I see somebody's iphone the have hundreds of unread emails on them, presumably the ones they don't care about. This suggests to me they don't care about emails enough to have a BB instead of iphone/android.
I on the other hand, receive and send tens of emails EVERY day.

When it comes to security, I really like two features of the BB:
1. Data traffic is encrypted so I can connect to any dodgy wifi network and I don't need to worry about privacy. I know that nobody (except maybe CIA) will be able to eavesdrop on my browsing, emails and pin messages.
2. State of the art memory encryption - I know it is possible to encrypt iphone and android but this article suggest that they are not as secure as BB.
I do employ encryption and password protection on my BB and I won't be worried about the data if I lose it.

I understand the most of the people won't care about these things because if the did they would have bought a BB.

EDIT: I am only on BIS so I am not talking about BES. I don't think that we need to discuss BES here.

Heh. I assume you're aware of RIM's recent tussle with the Indian government? RIM will give anybody with enough clout access to your emails. The fact RIM is in there as a middleman, albeit with encryption on the packets being sent back and forth, is not an advantage. It's simply converting one step (your ISP -> you) into two steps (your ISP -> RIM ->You). You really honestly think that's more secure ? If nothing else, the step ISP -> RIM is just as vulnerable as the step ISP->You on an IMAP/POP3 connection. RIM -> You is strongly secured but any security is only as strong as the weakest point.

And if we're specifically talking about the States, It's really not just the CIA who can read your stuff. According to the Patriot Act, pretty much any government agency can. Now, in theory, under international safe harbour rules users in the EU should be safe from that, but it's never actually been tested in court and, as one of the stipulations of the Patriot Act is the fact that it's illegal to reveal you've been asked for data under it, we don't actually know if it's ever been served on RIM in the US or not. In any case if your ISP has any kind of base in the US (e.g. Google or AOL), I'd kind of assume any US government agency can access any emails you may have at any time, whatever device you're reading them on.


BB's on disk encryption is very good, but it's actually not the weak point in the chain. Now you sound like the careful type so fair enough. But do you honestly think that most phone users are 'the careful type'? How many people do you think have a proper passcode, if any at all?


Oh yeah, stay away from that .

Jon

For various reasons, I have some mail rules that are implemented on my Mac, and some mail rules implemented on the server.
My iPhone only get's pushed two folders from the server, my Inbox and my Work folder. Any other folders I can request to get emails from them manually.

This means that the busy mailing lists I subscribe to (which are filtered into folders on the server) don't bother my phone until I navigate to their folder, and that emails related to work or the few other emails I may get a day I am notified of, if I have a Mac turned on with Mail launched it will filter work emails for me (I do this on the Mac so I can make the Mail icon jump about so I know I have work email rather than just any old mail).

GMail does a pretty decent job with it's SPAM filter, so I don't get much SPAM to my inbox. Looking at my mail now I have 14 SPAM messages and 2 messages from the Catalyst mailing list. Everything else has been read.

It should probably be noted that this is how I managed my mail before I got a smartphone too.

I do exactly the same with my 'droid for both my personal Gmail and work exchange. In fact I even used to do that on my Nokia 6300, although that wasn't push. It's kinda the obvious thing to do...

I know how it works and that's not what I was trying to say. I was talking about interception between my handset and rim server, e.g. when using public hotspot or a wifi that is not your own. When I was on holiday I was using hotel's wifi a lot and I didn't have to worry about it.
The case with Indian government is about BES, not BIS (they have BIS data already as RIM can give it to them easily). And I don't care about CIA or MI5 or even ordinary police taking a proper route to get an access to my data as I don't expect them to raid my Paypal account.


I agree, not many. But I do so I use BB.


I am pretty sure it is not all bad. And the case of the indian gov. proves that it is safe enough if you need security and privacy. And in the world of business there are going to be companies willing to pay for that no matter how much it costs. Not to mention gov. and security agencies!

Can you post a link to the guide to set this up?

I found it just by nosing around menus, but this tells you how to do it:
http://email.about.com/od/iphonemailtip ... e-Mail.htm

I'd rather there were pictures, but one can't have everything...

Wait?! You need to have Exchange Server to get the filtering on iphone and Android?

It works with Gmail and probably any other provider that provides rules, which is pretty much all of them I imagine. It's just most businesses use Exchange, so it's the obvious example to give.

No idea...GMail required me to use Exchange for me to use Push, I have GMail and nothing else, so I can't answer your question I'm afraid.

I am sure you will agree that running the Exchange is not really appropriate for a regular person, which is what I was talking about and I assumed you were as well.

Well that's a given at the price it costs. However it's a maybe little known fact that if you've got a HotMail account, these days what you're actually talking to is an Exchange 2010 server....

Jon