Exchange and iPhone.. A complete mess!

By David Ciccone, posted Tuesday, Jul. 15th, 2008
Reader Comments: 13

A full featured email device? We think not!

So I haven't said much about the iPhone 3G as I didn't think it was fair until I had some one on one time with the phone. One of the biggest areas I was looking forward to was the exchange support. Well... I am not sure where to start but I would like to point out some issues that I have seen so far.

Viewing-

Out of Office-

Calendar Categories

Global Address List-

No Flag Support-

Calendar Invites-

Tasks-

Notes-

I know many of you will call me an Apple iPhone hater and quite honestly I am not. I am liking this phone so much that I am willing to deal with the above bugs. Do I miss Windows Mobile exchange support? You better believe ya! Apple completely failed here and they should be embarrassed to tell their enterprise customers this is a full featured email device. Its not there yet Apple..

You forgot to add 2 important feature that are missing:

1. Being able to invite people to an calendar event
2. Being able to search the server for any keyword in your emails

These 2 are also very important for the corporate user.

I'm sure Apple will implement all these missing issues soon.

Also, the color coding on the calendars was not related to categories, it is the support for multiple calendars in Exchange.

To see this, add another calendar folder under your Inbox, and when you sync your iPhone with Exchange, you will see 2 different color coded calendars. You can choose to display both or not.

This feature does not exist in Windows Mobile.

The same feature is also true for multiple contacts folders.

Posted by mondeoman, Thursday, Jul. 17th, 2008

Regarding Calendar Category Coding:

I was upset as well that the iPHone didn't have category coloring. And I felt apple had misrepresented this in their marketing.

However, I finally figured out that their coloring method doesn't depend on "Categories" but rather "Calendar Folders".

For example. In your exchange folder structure, add another calendar folder... be it a sub folder or from your exchange box root; add some test events; and wait for the iPhone to sync. You will notice that when viewing the calendar it will combine ALL of your calendar folders in your iPhone coloring each calendar a different color.

You can easy view just one calendar at a time in the iPhone or ALL of them.

You can't choose your color and but to be honest the fact you can sync multiple exchange calendars with a iPhone was a huge slap in the face to windows mobile... why all these years we have only been able to sync the defaults?

By the way. The same works with multiple Contact folders with exchange and the iPhone... a long needed feature for window mobile users--albeit nothing is color coded in contacts.

So... David, their marketing is partially correct... I made the same mistake thinking colors related to categories. I actually stumbled across it. I never found ANY documentation about it.

Go figure.

Posted by iluvbeba, Wednesday, Jul. 16th, 2008

Will on the plus side, I do like the way emails are displayed on the iPhone. I just hope it doesn't take as long for them to fix Exchange support as it does for them to add copy & paste.

Posted by , Wednesday, Jul. 16th, 2008

Nope. Just bought the cruise in February and enjoying it immensely.

Posted by JNGold, Tuesday, Jul. 15th, 2008

Jerry did you get the 3g iphone?

Posted by Wifiguy, Tuesday, Jul. 15th, 2008

After using windows mobile for years now, I do miss some aspects of the ever so open platform. I know once the latest Jailbreak is available, it will open up the iPhone 3G to what I am able to do with the iPod touch - A LOT! I do miss PhoneAlarm and MortScript, but what I have gained from using the iPhone makes the loss a none issue. Would I ever go back to Windows Mobile, maybe... but not until WM can go a few weeks without having to reset. My co-worker has had the iPhone for a year now, and only had to reset once!

Posted by interstink, Tuesday, Jul. 15th, 2008

I gave you my early results on the personal blog but I agree the "corporate" offering is/was not ready. The good thing is its still a 3G device with a phenomenal screen footprint that hopefully a software update will resolve most issues with. The downside: try explaining "You have to wait" to the 150 employees who have iPhones saying but the guy at Apple said I can get my work mail pushed to me.

Posted by offenbuf, Tuesday, Jul. 15th, 2008

If you want full exchange support, cut and paste, turn-by-turn navigation, thousands of 3rd party apps (trial versions too), customization out the "you-know-what", etc, etc. :)

Posted by JNGold, Tuesday, Jul. 15th, 2008

I agree that the Exchange sync is not as good as a Windows Mobile device however for me synching of contacts, push email and agenda is more than enough, I don't use calender invites, out of office or email flags. Here is the question though, would you switch the iPhone 3G for any Windows Mobile device right now?

Posted by chrissyboy, Tuesday, Jul. 15th, 2008

Agree... Exchange Support it not fully implemented and needs work. Apple is said to have a release due shortly (Possibly this week), and some say will fix some of these issues/features.

I also think Apple needs to work on call volume. Mine works fine for me, but my wife wish's is was louder.

Posted by interstink, Tuesday, Jul. 15th, 2008

Dave, anyone who thinks you are an iPhone hater, has no clue. I would not even pay any mind to it.

It is nice to see some constructive criticism love thrown Apple's way considering how much is hurled WM's way.

Posted by Physboy, Tuesday, Jul. 15th, 2008

Sounds like the opposite of WM. WM does well for enterprise and not so well on the consumer side. Apple has been so used to the consumer side, sounds like they have a lot more work to do on the enterprise side.

Posted by brat1475, Tuesday, Jul. 15th, 2008

I knew it was too good to be true.

Posted by JNGold, Tuesday, Jul. 15th, 2008

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