Outlook Mobile Team Blog : Windows Mobile 5.0

Some cool devices for the Holidays...

zhamid — Thu, 07 Dec 2006 01:41:00 GMT

First, please accept my apologies for being away for so long. I took some vacation (okay, a lot of vacation days) and training. Rest of the time was spent frantically catching up. I'll be taking nearly all December off, so happy holidays.

I figured I'd write about some cool devices before taking off. This is not a comprehensive list by any means. I was told there are 100+ Windows Mobile devices out there. Just a few :-

T-Mobile Dash / HTC s620

T-Mobile Dash, also known as HTC s620 in some markets, comes with 64MB memory, microSD expansion (those things are tiny), 1.3 mega pixel camera and a large 2.4" color screen. It's got it all: quad-band, Wifi, bluetooth...you name it. And yes, it does have Windows Mobile 5.0 with Messaging and Security Feature Pack (always-up-to-date e-mails baby).

Cingular 8525 / HTC TyTN

This UMTS device also has GSM / GPRS / Edge connectivity, as well as WiFi, Bluetooth and mini USB. Better camera (2 mp) with flashlight only sweatens the deal. Oh, and did I say it has 128 MB ROM and 64MB SDRAM?

Cingular 3125 - HTC STARTrk

Now to clamshell (flip) phone lovers, Christmas came early this year for clamshell lovers.

Cingular Blackjack (US) / Samsung SGH i607 (elsewhere)

Wow! And you thought Moto-Q was cool. Similar to HTC Dash, it's a wide-screen Smartphone device with full QWERTY key board. Vodaphone, TIM and Bouygues carry it in Europe and Singular in the US. It's also sold unlocked. They said it was the thinnest and smallest Windows Mobile device yet to ship with a full QWERTY keyboard. I haven't had my hands on it yet, so I can't judge.

O2 XDA Stealth

It seems that this baby is for Eruope only for now. It does have a touch screen and slide-out keyboard.

Pharos GPS phones

There are also some cool GPS devices. Check out Pharos PPC 525e and Pharos PPC 600e.

Finally there's always Moto-Q and Palm Treo devices. Oh there are so many others. This was a good year. No, scratch that. This was a great year!

Dash...

zhamid — Fri, 20 Oct 2006 20:38:00 GMT

Check out this baby! The new Smartphone from T-Mobile :-

It's a wide-screen Smartphone with a Qwerty keyboard that's been getting really good reviews.

Check out this at brighthand: http://www.brighthand.com/default.asp?newsID=12467.

Sadly, I haven't played with it yet :(. I'll post my own review as soon as I get my hands on it. Now please excuse me while I wipe all this drool off my keyboard.

Palm Treo 700-series offer!

zhamid — Wed, 13 Sep 2006 21:40:44 GMT

I am now blogging using Windows Live Writer. Now I can actually blog really quickly without having to use a web-UI. Awesome!

That said, Palm has a crazy deal going on. Trade in your Treo 650 and get $125 towards the purchase of any 700 series Palm (get one with Windows Mobile). Seriously, who wouldn't want this baby (Treo 750v) :-

(picture courtesy of Palm)

QnA: Can I configure a default root folder for my IMAP account?

Outlook Mobile Bloggers — Fri, 08 Sep 2006 11:17:00 GMT

Question:

I have recently moved to the windows mobile platform and am having trouble with Outlook and IMAP. Is there any way for me to configure the root folder fore IMAP in the settings? My IMAP folders are under ~/mail/ of my account and Outlook Mobile unfortunately tries to get all the folders under ~/

Answer:

IMAP is a very 'flexible' standard, to say the least, so it is difficult to support the multitude of available servers, each configured slightly differently. We strive to support as many servers as we can, but some configurations are simply incompatible with our methodology or result in a poor user experience.

In your case, the incompatibility stems from the fact that the mail server does not confine the IMAP client to the mail folder. This causes our IMAP client to crawl through and synchronize the entire folder hierarchy instead of just the relevant mail folders. With a sufficiently large and complex folder hierarchy, this is enough to cause significant user pain in the form of wasted time, memory, and bandwidth.

Some mail clients get around this issue by allowing the user to specify a new root folder. Unfortunately the WM 5.0 IMAP implementation does not support a user configurable root folder.

Configurable IMAP folders (root, deleted, sent) have been requested and considered in the past. But due to the vagaries of the software development process, this feature has slipped through the cracks. We are always working to empower our users, and I hope that we can address this issue in a future release.

Thanks,

Jeffrey Min

SDE, Outlook Mobile

QnA: How come some Outlook fields are not sync-ed to device?

Outlook Mobile Bloggers — Thu, 31 Aug 2006 16:42:00 GMT

Question:

Why does pocket outlook not contain all the phone number fields that outlook has?

Specifically the "Other" and "Other fax" fields are missing in a pocket outlook contact. This means that the phone numbers for many of my contacts (over 200) do not appear on my new smartphone. Is there any workaround for this or do I have to manually move 200 odd numbers from the "Other" field into an alternative such as "Home 2" which is synchronised.

Answer:

We decided to omit some less frequently used fields from the desktop Outlook to reduce number of fields showing on the Contact Edit Card on device. We felt that the Edit Card would be difficult to use if we have too many fields on it. I am sorry that this is affecting you. As you pointed out, you would need to move the Other / Other Fax to the fields that we support synchronization.

Regards,

Joe Chiu
SDET, Outlook Mobile

QnA: How many accounts can I have?

zhamid — Mon, 14 Aug 2006 22:01:00 GMT

Question:

I'm using an Imate Jasjar device bearing outlook mobile,, and my question is very simple:

I find that it is not possible to me to create more than 5 email accounts in this device.

Is there a limitation for account-creation, or am I doing something wrong?

Answer:

Due to some database limitation, number of e-mail accounts is restricted to 8. Most devices ship with 2-3 accounts preconfigured (Outlook, text messages etc). This means you can only have 5-6 additional accounts.

Some T-Mobile phones actually ship with 4 pre-created accounts, the fourth being a TZones email account, so they'll only allow 4 more accounts.

Zeeshan Hamid.

QnA: Dude, what's wrong with IMAP???

zhamid — Mon, 14 Aug 2006 21:52:00 GMT

Since a vast majority of questions we get are IMAP related, let me just come out and say it. We have an issue with IMAP :(

Basically we do not fully support IMAP namespaces. According to Wes Salmon, our awesome SDET in Messaging, some servers use delimiters that we do not recognize, but would if we fully supported namespaces. This causes some issues with not being able to sync some folders (eg. Sent items).

I know this isn't what you wanted to hear, but I guess we messed up!

Zeeshan Hamid.

QnA: Selecting an account from outlook mobile to send with

zhamid — Wed, 12 Jul 2006 20:52:00 GMT

Question: I'm fairly new to the outlook mobile scene, and I have a question about an outlook feature and its equivalent in outlook mobile (smartphone - Treo 700w).

I have two POP3 email accounts listed in my outlook to send/receive with. I do this so I can sync it to my phone and get both personal and business e-mail. The default e-mail address in outlook is business, as when I'm at home on outlook I almost always use it for work as opposed to using the web interface (gmail) for my personal emails.

When using outlook mobile, I find that the from: field is not editable, and is defaulted to "Oulook e-mail". I would love to be able to respond to my personal mail from on the go, and not have to be in front of a computer to do so.

Is there any way to select which account I would like to send with when using outlook mobile? Or can you offer a better suggestion than creating a POP3 account on my phone solely for my personal mail, setting it not to send receive automatically, and then just using that to send items?

Answer:

Uh, Treo 700w actually runs the “PocketPC” software, not the smartphone one (the distinction is confusing even for most of us who work here). The response below is valid for both Platforms.

I think I understand your issue. You are doing desktop sync. Unfortunately it seems that out software is suboptimal and cannot handle the scenario you described. Essentially if you are using the desktop sync then we basically put the email you send in the “Outbox” and send the “Outbox” with the desktop outlook. The desktop then sends this message out. The desktop uses whatever default account you have to send the message. We have no concept of multiple accounts within outlook if you are using the desktop sync.

Do you have a data plan? If yes then you could sync your gmail directly using pop3. I realize that this isn’t exactly what you wanted to hear, but at least this way you’ll be able to maintain threads when you reply using the pop3 account.

The ability to have multiple accounts to send emails from is a great suggestion. I will take it to our product planning team to consider it for a future release.

We appreciate the suggestion and apologize for the limitation. If you have other general comments about the device or the software then please do send them to me. I’ll make sure they each appropriate people. We are constantly improving our product and feedback from our users helps us a great deal in prioritizing different features in our list.

Thanks.

Zeeshan Hamid