Exchange Activesync comparison Windows Mobile and iPhone

Jason Langridge has written up a great article showing the differences between Windows Mobile and iPhone 2.0 Exchange Activesync implementations. It is definitely worth a read to see where Apple falls short of Windows Mobile and there are one or two additional features that the iPhone 2.0 has that Windows Mobile does not, all the details after the break.

To start with here is what is missing from the iPhone 2.0 implementation:-

• Only the inbox can be set to synchronise – subfolders can be accessed but no synchronisation policy can be set
• No Flagging on email
• Cannot set Out of Office message
• No Hot Keys for managing messages
• Difficult to get to Global Address List
• No support for Activesync Schedule (eg. push during work hrs – pull outside of that)
• No Smart Filtering
• No ability to change sort order of email messages
• No support for Server Search of email messages
• Trying to delete messages or move them when you don’t have connectivity generates lots of errors messages and you cannot actually delete or move when offline
• Message status is not set on the server for replying/forwarding to an email, similarly the status from the server is not provided to the iPhone
• You cannot automatically set attachments to download
• There is no control over maximum attachment size
• You can’t see the number of unread or new emails without unlocking the device

• No ability to invite attendees to a meeting
• You cannot provide a reason for declining meetings
• Attendee status is not available
• There is no click through to get access to information from the GAL for a participant
• No support for setting Out of Office message
• You cannot delete a single occurrence of a recurring meeting – you can only delete the whole series
• Cannot forward contact information via SMS or Vcard
• Cannot enforce Storage or device encryption
• Remote wipe doesn’t seem to be immediate and restore requires recradling to iTunes
• PIN unlock timeout is not enforced on the iPhone
• You have to ‘slide’ to unlock – then enter the pin code to unlock the device

And now the extras that the iPhone 2.0 Software has over Windows Mobile

• HTML email with Exchange 2003 and Exchange 2007
• Support for Multiple Calendars (within personal mailbox – not access to other people’s calendars)
• Support for subfolders in Contacts

So it looks like Apple has omitted quite a few features from the 2.0 software and it remains to be seen if we will see them added.

via Jason Langridge