Nokia Disconnects; No More BlackBerry Support for Eseries
Purchasers of Nokia’s latest Eseries devices may be a bit distressed to learn that BlackBerry Connect will no longer be updated for Nokia’s S60 devices, effective immediately. Just after a recent update was issued for the latest E90 firmware Nokia made the announcement and was hardly indirect with its reasoning for the move. Nokia’s Simon Ainslie had this to say:
RIM are a competitor and have done a reasonable job in a space that is traditionally ours, so it’s no great surprise that we see this as an opportunity to give consumers a proper choice on what email solution they want.
Perhaps the most confusing part of this move is the simple fact that Nokia’s OEM email support is, well, shoddy at best. Unreliable, poorly-executed and horrible are more descriptive terms that have been tossed around from time to time. The integrated POP / IMAP support is just north of unusable. Nokia’s Mail for Exchange client historically hasn’t been much better, though the most recent client addresses many issues of the past. Mail for Exchange however, as the name might dictate, only supports Exchange email. This might be fine if you use your device strictly for work (and your company uses Exchange) but in the day and age of “convergence”, most people like to have access to personal email as well. Nokia’s recent “Nokia Email” beta does show signs of life, though slight. All this aside, if your company uses RIM’s email system and you had plans to snag an E71 instead of a BlackBerry… Think again.
This is very sad news for the two people in the US who are using Nokia phones with BB connect. It is actually unfortunate, from what I understand these are very well made devices, which are simply very poorly marketed here in the US, resulting in Poor sales. When is the last time you saw a Nokia commercial on TV? Yeah me neither; we have the Nokia theater by the staples Center but I guess that does not count, lol
Sadly by them announcing such a move, I will end up getting a Blackberry Bold instead of the E71. It’s not always a user’s choice on which device they want. I have to take work into consideration and email is a huge part of it. I have a blackberry for work, but I also want/need a personal phone. I’ve always loved Nokias and their interface; however not having BBConnect sealed the deal. I cannot merge work (if I was on call) with my personal life. I am not carrying huge smart phones. Pulling the plug on BBConnect has pulled the plug on getting the E71 NAM when it does become more widely available. Smooth move, Nokia.
Wow! How dumb are they? I’m sure many folks who get these devices do it with the expectation of having Blackberry connect email. Won’t this just drive those folks over to Curves and Bolds? And they did this before having a “replacement” up and running? This just seems like an arrogant move at the exact wrong time.
…so was it a .45 or .50AE they used to shoot themselves in the foot with….
What a mistake. BB is a competitor however, it make so much business sense to leave the BB connect on their devices becaue many who don’t like or want a BB because of their,…well antiquated UI have the E series as a great option and would pick up those sales. Now, they’ve left those sales on the floor and the once popular E series is going to find it’s way to a quick death here in the U.S.. Whoever is there marketing VP in the States should be fired.
I think your description of Mail for Exchange is a bit off. Your mention that “most people like to have access to personal email” might lead people to think that if they install MfE they can’t access their personal email.
It might be good to point out that MfE is a plugin for the Nokia Messaging app, which can open multiple mailboxes. On mine, I’ve got my SMS inbox, my Gmail account, and my Exchange account from work. It’s great to access all three in one unified place.
Now if MfE would just support sub-folders under my inbox I’d be more pleased.
Just when Nokia finally has three decent US 3G phones, they go kill BB Connect…
Is it a deathwish? Do they just hate the US market?
Wow. Bad move Nokia. I popped into the Chicago Nokia store last night, and loved the E71. Was definitely intending to buy it when they rolled out BBC. Now, I guess, I’ll be waiting forever for the Bold. Sorry, Nokia, you lost a sure sale.
For all you people shouting doom and gloom, what is stopping RIM from writing/releasing an S60 version of BBConnect? The answer: nothing.
Nokia’s beta push Email service has quite a delay between the time an email is sent and is recieved, where as ironically if you are using say, Gmail IMAP, then you actually get notifications near instantly.
I’m hoping that they find a way to speed the push notifications up, because the regular service on a handset makes no effort to reconnect should you temporarily go out of service (eg take the subway etc)
Out of curiousity, can anyone give me some info on how the time delay fares compared to BIS & BB Connect?
Nokia is trying to compete with blackbarry by developing their own corporate email system, i would assume. If they keep adding BBC on their devices noone would want to switch to their system since bbc has been around longer. I like this move from their prospective, the only problem is that they don’t have their system up and running yet which makes it a bad move because since they plugged bbc they should have had a replacement which is better and more convenient for people. I guess it will eventually be up and running but not a very smooth strategy i guess. I don’t think it’s gonna hurt them because noone sells more phones than Nokia whether with bbc or without!
I’d like to see them with more urgency to develop a bbc killer, because they are sure capable of developing anything in this sector.
Maybe having the Qualcomm issue out the way they may put their concentration into delivering our needs.
my 22cents
so what’s the big deal that you just have to press connect to get mail instead of it killing your battery and data plan automatically. this is better for some users. also, nokia email (beta) is working as advertised. i sent myself a little mail and in 5 seconds i got it (gmail) on my crappy third-world country edge connection.
Hmmm, let me explain;
You don’t have to press connect to see if you are getting a call, nor if you have to receive a text message – people just want the same for email.
also, people arent really suggesting that nokia’s solution doesnt work – just that its not up to the level of the service that they have now cut off and are now attempting to compete against.
pull email is a good solution for some people and their devices – but some others would make better use of push
if nokia would start putting better batterys in there phone like the e71 i doubt it will have 10 hours of talk time, with my old e62 after a day of letting check my email on its own my battery would be almost dead i just check it when ever im bored at work. instead of constantly
Dumb questions, but Nokia’s Mail for Exchange is pull not push?
How can that be with Microsoft having a push connection via ActivSync for basically all other platforms, including the iPhone?
Did I understand correctly that Mail for Exchange on Nokia cannot do folders? If so, that is crazy. Half the utiltiy of this is reading emails, deleting or filing emails away when traveling to cut the size of my inbox when I get back.
Nokia’s MFE uses ActiveSync, which most IT admins will NOT turn on for outside of network connectivity.
Most organizations chose Blackberry/BES not for “push vs connect” but to ensure messages from Exchange (or other mail systems) are encrypted where only the client device (e.g. the phone) can decrypt.
A corporate email message received on a Exchange is on receipt instantly pushed via the BES server to Blackberry as an encrypted message. It is basically an unreadable message if intercepted. Blackberry receives the message from the BES server (over a protocol RIM defines) and then pushes it to the Blackberry device. The push event is NOT a polling even but a real packet push to force the device to get the message.
Active Sync does NONE of this and has a basic crypto handler, to make matters worse not only do you risk Active Sync being enabled as a gaping security hole you also then get no reliable push mechanism as the phone has to initiate the connection the server and therefore has to poll the server and “pull” messages as updates occur. Similar to the iphone exchange software.
The even worse point is for those of us who roam out our home countries. Most network operators know the ports / services BB uses and have flat rate data plans to cover ALL traffic among those ports / services. When using MFE you are at the mercy of your network operators standard data roaming rates. To make matters worse the constant polling of the server via ActiveSync causes MUCH higher daily data usage. You could get NO messages, but have 1MB in data transfers. On BB no messages in a day is about 7K of data.
So NO, E71 is NOT a corporate device, it’s consumer device trying to add corporate features – which ironically most organizations can’t support
I’m not sure about push vs. pull. But, I use Mail for Exchange and the email arrives at my phone sooner than my Outlook inbox.
Guys,
Do not blame Nokia but RIM. RIM has little incentive to make a current version of Blackberry Connect. Why would it give up the hardware revenues and the better integration/customization they can do when they own the hardware.
So BBC was always 1-1.5 years out of date, lacking many of the features of Blackberry OS v 4.1 and above. Just compare the functionality of OS v4.5 to BBC v4.0 – there is no comparison.
Thus, Nokia is stuck as always, with great hardware crippled by poor software. They need to ditch Symbian, get their next generation Linux based system running and then add constantly upgraded applications on top. Leave the Domino users to RIM but make a good fight for the Exchange users.
Linux doesn’t fix everything… Look at the terrible Mot handsets with Linux.
The carriers are NOT supporting Linux because all the issues with how to sign and verify apps that don’t brick a phone or cause support issues. The closed OS devices tend to be favored by the carriers. This is a fact! anyone who has tried to go against the grain either NEVER get’s there SW to ship or their devices to market.
Symbian, Windows Mobile, iPhone and Java/MIDP apps are fairly low risk because all have a signing process and methods to ensure access to low level phone functions are controlled.
Not saying I agree, but the risks of having to support Joe Blow user are what prevents the carriers from talking on new OS’s.
I have a Rim BB and a Nokia. The Nokia has the new Nokia Email. It is as good as a BB. It is instantaneous (nearly). When this takes hold it will be interesting to see how it will compare in price to BB. I guess if all fails I could use the BB that is in the phone or just go back to the 8820.
If you are interested in a solution which is as secure as Blackberry but runs on the Nokia E71 and others, you may want to know that Good Technology is going to release a new client (currently in Beta) shortly.
This will be fully supported on the E71 and will work on other E and N series devices. It will give full subfolder support, creation of appointments (including free/busy lookup), attachment sending and very low data usage (approx. 5mb per month).
It should be available in December, talk to a sales guy from Good for more details.
[Just to be open - I work for Good so I'm naturally biased but at least it gives people a choice of solution]
So glad I chose the HTC TytnII when I did nearly got the Nokia. My HTC supports BB Connect and it works perfectly. I don’t understand how a large company like Nokia can disenfranchise millions of users worldwide, how stupid. Bandwidth is extremely expensive in South Africa and BB Connect saves me a fortune in data. Thanks HTC.