As the use of smart phones and internet on your mobile increases, staying connected to your email 24/7 has started becoming very common. The Blackberry has become synonymous with mobile email. But what exactly is the Blackberry and do you really need it? Let’s find out.
What is a Blackberry? Is it a device or a service?
The Blackberry is a wireless handheld device developed by the Canadian company Research in Motion (RIM) which provides the Blackberry push-email service. So Blackberry is a device as well as a service.
Do I need to use a Blackberry device only to use the Blackberry service?
Not necessarily. Various manufacturers also provide the ‘Blackberry Connect’ client on their mobile handsets which can connect to the Blackberry service. All Nokia E-Series devices, except for the latest Nokia E66 and E71, support Blackberry. Besides many Windows based mobiles as well as a few Sony Ericsson devices support Blackberry Connect. Few examples of such Blackberry enabled mobiles are Nokia (E50, E51, E60, E61, E62, E71, E90, 9300, 9500), HTC TyTN and Sony Ericsson (P990, P1i)
What is the advantage of Blackberry service over other typical email services?
The approach followed by Blackberry email is “Push”, wherein new mails get sent by the server to the mobile device as against “Pull” where the email client on your mobile phone regularly checks the mailbox to see whether there is new mail.
What are the kinds of Blackberry services and are they all really “push”?
There are various ways to get Blackberry email:
a) Blackberry Enterprise Server (BES): This is the setup normally deployed by large businesses wherein the BES interfaces with your company’s Microsoft Exchange Server (or Lotus Domino or Novell Groupwise) and allows your Blackberry to automatically mirror your Exchange Inbox. This is true push mail and your mobile and the server are always in sync.
b) Blackberry Internet Service (BIS): This is the setup used by small businesses who do not have a Exchange server to host their email and depend upon POP/IMAP servers. This setup is also used by individuals with their personal email accounts which support POP/IMAP. In this kind of a setup, BIS checks for new mails every fifteen minutes by default. If it does find a new mail, the mail is then pushed to the device. For the next fifteen minutes, the BIS will check every three minutes for new mail. If no new mail is found within that second set of fifteen minutes, the server reverts to again checking once every fifteen minutes. As long as the server finds new mail within that time frame, it will continue to check every three minutes. This is not true push mail.
This does not, however, apply to all email accounts. Gmail and Yahoo mail are two notable exceptions to this rule. The BIS remains constantly connected to these services, and will push new mail automatically to the device, without the fifteen minute interval.
c) Blackberry Email address: This is the free push email address included with all Blackberry plans. You can configure your existing email addresses to automatically forward a copy to your yourname@carrier.blackberry.net email address. This is also true push email, as email will show up instantly on the Blackberry the moment someone sends it to you.
Are there any alternatives to Blackberry?
The ability to receive emails instantly on your mobile is no longer limited to the Blackberry. The most recommended and free alternative is Emoze which works out of the box with Gmail, Yahoo Mail and OWA (outlook web access). It also works with POP3/ Exchange via MS Outlook desktop connector.
Other free options include Consilient and Emansio. One advantage Consilient has over Emoze is that it allows you to push more than 1 email account at one time to your cellphone but this comes at the cost of loading Consilient own email application on your phone, while Emoze works with the mobile’s built in Email client. Emansio is a free push mail client which works on only Windows Mobile based phones.
Nokia has also launched its Nokia Email service (currently in beta) to compete with Blackberry and has hence decided not to provide Blackberry Connect client on its new E Series phones starting from the E66 and E71.
Apple has also launched its MobileMe service on its iPhone to compete with Blackberry.
Other paid push e-mail solutions available in the market today are NotifyLink, SEVEN, and Visto
Is the Blackberry device better than other handsets?
This article is not intended to compare the Blackberry handset with other mobiles. That is a different debate alltogether.
So do I really need Blackberry push email?
Frankly it’s not always useful to be notified immediately when a new mail arrives, because that’s too often. Even if you get to know immediately when you have new email, so what? One can only use email when one has the time to read them. In pull mail, you read mail when you are ready to read it, not when the sender wants you to read it.
If not knowing that you have got new mail immediately really makes no difference, your own smartphone working on Symbian or Windows generally always has perfectly capable email clients which fulfill the needs of the majority of the mobile email using public. These simple mail clients do so without the hoopla and cost of “Push” email. It works because based on the way we use email, or at least the way we all should be using email. The “Push” advantage which everyone tends to love is actually bothersome, and “Pull” is just plain good enough. You can simply setup your email client to check for new email every 15 minutes wherein your mobile will check for and download email automatically.
Having said that, for businessmen who are constantly on the move, there is no denying the fact that they need constant access to their emails without a laptop. But this can be achieved by various other means as well which are either free or very cheap compared to the Blackberry. There is no doubting the credentials of the technology behind the Blackberry service. The problem is the cost that it comes with. If your carrier is providing you Blackberry service at a throwaway price, by all means get it. If however, it is available at a steep price, you know your options!
