My poor Palm TX is dying a slow death. PDAs have gone the way of the dodo, so I’m hoping to switch to a Verizon smartphone that will sync with my Outlook calendar, contacts, and tasks. I’d thought about making the obvious switch to the Palm Pre Plus, but some reviews I’ve seen have trashed its battery life, so now I’m not so sure. The Droid phones seem to sync only with Google, and while I could sync Outlook with Google calendar, I don’t think my company would be pleased, plus I understand that the task function wouldn’t work that way.
Has anyone had any experience with Verizon smartphones that can sync, browse the web, oh, and work as a phone? Thanks!
Touchdown is widely used as an Exchange client in the Android world, so I wouldn’t rule out a Droid of some sort out of hand. Depends on your company, network etc though.
guizot, yes, but I was talking about PDAs as a stand-alone. Palm has moved away from that, so it appears the only way to get a PDA is to get a smartphone. It’s handy for me to be able to carry my Outlook calendar and tasks, memos, etc. around with me but my options are becoming rather limited. I liked just having the PDA and a simple cell phone for emergencies, but that doesn’t seem to be a reasonable option now.
Baron Greenback, I think I’ve heard of Touchdown before. Does it work with all Outlook versions? I’ve got 2007 now, but I think they’re pushing out 2010 soon at work. I’ll have to check out Touchdown. I understand that Droid phones are really nice.
I’ve never synced an iPhone with an Exchange server (I don’t have an iPhone), but when I synced my Macintosh at home with my Exchange server from work, I was amazed at how easy it was. I went into my Mail program and created a mail account for an Exchange server. The program asked me “what is your e-mail address?” I gave it my e-mail address. It asked me “what is your password?” and I gave it my password. That was it! All my mail folders and calendar items started downloading to my home computer. I didn’t need to know the name of any mail server or anything else.
P.S. I don’t want to delete my post since I took the trouble to type it in, but I missed the all-important word Verizon in the OP. :smack: There are rumours of the iPhone coming to Verizon in January 2011, but those rumours have been around forever.
I have no idea what kind of synching is possible, but is something like an iPod touch what you’re looking for?
All the PDA-like calendar, etc. apps you can handle (plus apps for anything else you want) without a cell-phone contract and bills.
I have an iPod touch. The iPod touch would be able to sync with an Exchange server, but you can only sync wherever a wireless network is available to you. It doesn’t have a cellphone signal like the iPhone.
Apple doesn’t do USB ports, right? So if I got a Touch, I could only do wireless, I couldn’t plug it in? Sorry if that sounds stupid. I’ve got not Apple products.
What do you want to plug it into? The iPod touch has a 30-pin connector. It comes with a cable that has a 30-pin connector one side, and a USB connector on the other side. You use that cable to hook it up to any device with a USB port, like your computer or a power adapter to recharge it.
Ceejaytee, if you really want a PDA replacement that’s not a cell phone, and you’re considering the iPod touch as a possibility, you can have a hands-on demonstration at any Apple retail store. You can find a list of them here: Apple Store - Find a Store - Apple
Looking at your location, you should be able to find one not too far from you. To find the most knowledgeable staff, don’t go to an Apple re-seller like Best Buy. Go to an actual Apple store.
Verizon Droid X owner (whose wife is a Verizon HTC Incredible owner - both are Android phones) checking in here.
When I first saw your OP I read “synch with Outlook” and decided not to reply as I don’t particularly have any expertise with that. But then I saw that folks were interpreting your request as “synchs with Microsoft Exchange servers” and you were not correcting that, and that’s something I do have a bit of experience with.
My wife and I both use our respective cellphones to access and synch with her company’s corporate Microsoft Exchange server. Android’s native email app seems to work just fine with it. Neither of us has any particular expertise with the server’s calendar features (we’re in the US, most of her company is in the UK, we usually don’t get invited to or attend their meetings), but I understand that Android 2.2-based phones (both of which we have) perform that function just fine.
I’ve just checked my phone, and Android’s native mail app doesn’t seem to automatically pull in my Exchange server contacts.
Both the android phones and the iPhone would require that your corporate Exchange Server folks set up something called “ActiveSynch” on your server, but I believe your Palm TX already requires the same thing.
Other folks have mentioned the Touchdown app, and everything I’ve heard about it is that it’s better than the native Android mail app for accessing Microsoft Exchange servers. Touchdown is $19.95, is downloadable with your Android phone via the Android Market. and apparently handles Exchange server contacts and calendars.
If your Palm was synching with Outlook before. what about a Palm Pre? Verizon offers those and while they don’t have the market penetration that a Droid or iPhone does, I’d bet the transition would be relatively smooth.
sevenwood: My company allows syncing with the Exchange server. I’m now thinking of a Droid plus Touchdown. I may have to contact my IT people to see if they know of any issues. Which do you like better, the Droid X or the HTC Incredible?
Mama Zappa: I’ve heard the Palm Pre has a terrible battery life, which concerns me. It’s too bad because I figured it would be a seamless transition, but bad battery life is troublesome.
The Pre is a totally different operating system (WebOS) than what the OP’s current device runs (Palm OS) - from what I’ve heard there’s not much in common. (Yes, there’s a Classic emulator, but that sounds like a stopgap rather than something to count on using long-term.) Switching from Palm OS to WebOS is really no less of a change than going to Android or BlackBerry.
I’m facing this dilemma myself, without the PDA-versus-phone complication: I currently have a Palm Centro, love the fact that it synchronizes with Outlook on my home PC (no Exchange involved), and am wondering just how much my paradigm is going to have to shift when the Centro gives up the ghost.
I really like Palm products, and from what I hear WebOS is quite nifty. But I’ve reluctantly (nearly) ruled it out for my next phone because a survey of the applications that I really use on my phone revealed that very few of them had been ported to WebOS - and suitable substitutes didn’t appear to be on offer, either.
But I’m following this thread with interest. My Centro’s not dead yet…
Note that this is** really** an opinion-type thing.
I personally prefer the Droid X. I like the larger screen size, I really love the Swypetechnology that comes with it, and I rather like its slightly better (than the HTC) tendency to hold onto a battery charge.
Note that I don’t do “social networking”, so that “Motoblur” stuff that Motorola constantly advertises about its cellphones is something that I completely ignore. (You can post one message that simultaneously shows up on Facebook, Myspace, Twitter, …") The good news is that on the Droid X I can ignore it (I understand that on the original Droid you really couldn’t).
My wife, on the other hand, prefers her HTC Incredible. The Droid X is just too large for her to hold comfortably in her hand when she makes phone calls, and what’s the point of a cellphone that’s too large to comfortably hold onto? And everything I’ve heard about the “HTC Sense” interface that HTC puts on its cellphones is favorable.
This is the Google page for setting up your gmail account as a Microsoft Exchange account on an iPhone, so you can make direct use of Gmail contacts and calendar. It is a piece of cake.
I have a Driod and I use Outlook over a MS exchange server setup.
A few points.
The built in Android mail server app syncs with Outlook just fine. It has all the sync parameter settings you need for most mail apps including exchange server, POP3 and Gmail.
Touchdown for the Android OS (which I also use) is only 20 and is effectively an Outlook clone that gives you almost all the deeper Outlook features in a handheld format vs the more stripped down (but perfectly servicable for most uses) built in Android email client. It's quite remarkable re what it packs into a small footprint 20.00 program.