I was asked one day at work whether a business man should get an iPhone or a HTC TyTN II. My instant reaction was to get the HTC, one decision that I still believe in even after giving it some thought. I recently purchased an i-mate JasJam from eBay, it was boring at first running Windows Mobile 5 but after hacking it to run Windows Mobile 6 I find it to be a great and powerful phone (3.5G HSDPA) that I am satisfised with my purchase. Sure it doesn’t look as flash as the iPhone or run the slick OS X but it has a super fast broadband connection as well as WiFi 802.11G.
The reason I recommended the HTC over the iPhone is because it lacks the practical use for a business market. A business user expects email to be delivered quickly with attachments and all; he does not want to be waiting for the EDGE and often GPRS connection to pull down a 3MB PDF or PPT document if he needs to review it quickly. A 3.5G HSDPA connection will normally operate at around 110kb/s which is as good as most people get coming out of their phone lines and perfect to recieve rich content on a phone.
As for emails, you are limited to HTTP, POP3 or IMAP. I know for a fact that IT departments rely so heavily on the services of Exchange that it is impossible to squeeze this through even in IMAP or HTTP, users need tight LDAP integration and this is something that Windows Mobile and even Palm devices provide to their users. The iPhone is just a glamourous consumer device that is just as good as a stock standard Razr or Prada phone, it provides no special benefits over a WM, BlackBerry or Symbian device.
What the business areas need to get over is the blinding aspect of being so good looking and the fact that is Apple and really look at what they do with their desktop and Outlook and watch how it converges to a Windows or BlackBerry phone with ease.
Can an iPhone synchronize my contacts, emails, tasks and calendars off my Exchange server ready for me to read to in the morning? Does it authenticate my workplace’s RADIUS powered wireless network? Is WiFi so well rolled out that it erases the woes of falling back on GPRS for costly data and snail speed access? Would my IT or anyone tech savy I know be able to service it after I have hacked it? These are all the questions you should look at, if you just use a phone to be a SMS/Hotmail/GMail/Phone device then I recommend the iPhone but if you find yourself handling emails that need to be ready ondemand at lightning speed or rely on the huge library of applications including ActiveSync then I suggest you look at anything powered by Windows or Symbian.
TIME may of labelled it the Invention of the Year but does the design fit the purpose of your intended use?
