iPhone works well with AINEO Secure
iPhone works well with AINEO Secure. We are pleased to announce after two weeks of testing that the iPhone works well with the groupware, email, schedule, and collaboration features of AINEO Secure. We do have some comments about the new Apple entry to the wireless market.
If you are serious about email, then you will probably not like the iPhone all that much. This is especially true for BlackBerry users even with little experience on the BB. Although the keyboard is aesthetically not exactly pretty. It is certainly functionally. Typing on the iPhone is a bit of a dog. You have to ‘one-finger it’, as opposed to ‘thumbing it’.
In short, it takes a lot longer to write an email in English, and even more so in Japanese. When using the iPhone touch keyboard there are a lot of errors in selecting the correct character. We have seen other users on the units tapping one character at a time with their index fingers. It reminds me of the fairy in the song Little Bunny Fufu. Where as a BlackBerry user, you can quickly respond to emails on the run as you can thumb in your message very quickly.
The other very important area is security. If one of your iPhone users loses their phone, good luck! You have all that company data floating around for someone else to grab. You should tell your users to set the 4-digit pin on their iPhones and set the system to wipe the memory after 5 missed password attempts. But nothing beats the blackberry for it’s remote wipe.
Even Windows Mobile 6, which supposedly remote data wipe does not unless you have a WinMobile 6.1 device. When this vapourware really becomes existent then maybe windows mobile will be more of a competitor to the BlackBerry and the iPhone.
For doing business, it is a lot easier to lookup a phone number on a Blackberry by typing in S-M- by which time you have all the Smiths coming up on your display. The iPhone works more like a Rolodex. If you have a few thousand contacts, it take a while to flip through all the letter S entries.
For now, if you are thinking about mobility this is the AINEO recommendation. If you are serious about email and security, then BlackBerry is the superior choice. It is a lot more versatile for the business person. Questions? Contact us, any of our team would be happy to help.
Thanks for your write-up and perspective on the iPhone. I too am a fan of the Blackberry, but am far more impressed by the iPhone due to a full browser and a large selection of good apps many of which are free. I think you should give the iPhone another chance.
The secrets of business use of the iPhone start from their page here:
http://www.apple.com/iphone/enterprise/
My understanding was that remote wipe when integrated into an enterprise groupware system is just as good as RIM.
Check out the speed tests between experienced users of both phones people have put on Youtube or other review sites and you will see that for English, the iPhone is often faster due to it’s auto correction. For Japanese, I haven’t seen any benchmarks, but I doubt it can beat a Shibuya girl with long nails as that is really a spectacle of speed input.
As for contact lookups, there is an alphabet down the side of the screen that enables me to jump immediately to the S for Smith, with one tap, so I find that quite reasonable.
Again, the whole point of an iPhone is that you don’t need to carry your iPod and a phone both around. The convergence of your music, podcasts, videos, into a very capable internet mobile device is the real draw. So, I don’t really see it as a Blackberry competitor as Blackberry is really missing all the features that the iPhone excels at. With that concept in mind, I think you’ll have a different take on the supremacy either device.
Thank you for reading our review.
You are correct in that you CAN do a remote wipe from an exchange server.
We are looking at products from the point of a business person. For a road warrior who uses a smartphone as a main device, we find currently the Blackberry, followed by Nokia’s e61 are the best devices combining size and functionality. (Not that great for multi-media at this point).
We are agree with you that the iPhone is a great product, but it is not recommended for a serious businessperson who does a lot of work on their smartphone. That would be executives, sales people and others who are out of the office a lot.
The beauty of the Blackberry is it’s integration with the mail server and collaboration features. The iPhone is good for checking a quick mail, but not for typing many things out or trying to go through a couple thousand contacts.
Apple has built a great product and we anticipate it will get even better. But until they enhance the input the BB is definitely tops. We haven’t found many executives willing to give up their BlackBerry’s for a device with limited security and even more limited battery-life.
If you using iPhone with Exchange, just carry a charger.
Interesting to see how things evolve from here!