Old topic, but I'm looking to get a droid myself, and also am currently a blackberry user. I'm told that the Droid still does not support instantaneous emails like blackberry, but what I don't understand is I've gotten instant emails from my yahoo email account on my blackberry for years. If it supports this "push" feature for blackberry, why can't Droid receive it as well? I understand that blackberry company email typically has a blackberry server working with Outlook, but if yahoo works on the blackberry, shouldn't I be able to get instantaneous updates pushed from the server, rather than require my phone to check my email every few minutes to see if I got another?
Let's clarify a few things:
1. The Droid definitely supports push email. However, your mail account has to support push. In other words, a POP account will never be push. Gmail, is of course push as well as ActiveSync. Accounts that support IMAP idle should have very fast delivery as well.
2. Comparing to the BB is pointless. Even if you're not on BES you have to use BIS with a BB. There's no BIS equivalent in the Android world. You can use gmail's ability to check other accounts to do the same thing. However, gmail's mail fetcher runs on its own schedule and it doesn't automatically adapt polling like BIS does. You can set up extremely short polling intervals as a workaround for pull accounts but you'll kill your battery despite what the mistaken post in this thread claims.
3. As for Yahoo and the BB, again, pointless comparison. RIM has worked behind the scenes and very closely with Yahoo to allow for the push functionality that you get with Yahoo and a BB. Again, there's no Android equivalent for this since Android doesn't have anything like BIS. Consider this a plus as you don't have to worry about RIM/BIS outages affecting your email.
Also, I was told that droid won't allow you to edit excel, word, and other documents (all of the above I was told today by a rep at a local cell phone service provider). If Droid "DOES", I sure don't see it.. it DOESN'T get instant email, it DOESN'T let you edit word or excel documents... those are very common things in the business environment.
Always take statements from a rep with a grain of salt. Try looking into Documents to Go. Android is significantly more versatile than the BB IMO. It's certainly capable of everything mentioned above and much, much more.
Does Blackberry have some form of copyright on the way it works so that no other company can compete with them?
They certainly have patents as copyrights don't apply in this context. Again, the patents don't matter since Android is nothing like the BB. Again, this is a plus as there's no need for RIM's infrastructure, APN, specialized BB data plans and all that nonsense. Most BB users don't think of these pieces as they don't see them but without all the backend, BB's are severely crippled. Android doesn't require the same sort of backend.
If a business could get a droid right out of the box and have it do everything the blackberry could do, I don't see why companies wouldn't consider switching. Droids are cheaper than blackberry's, and they seem more user friendly.
1. Better centralized device management built into the BB. BES is required but devices can be remotely locked and wipes without any 3rd party solution.
2. IT policies to granularly lock down sections of the BB as desired. This allows IT to keep users from installing junk and causing problems.
In my experience, corporate BB support is a lot easier. Granted, this is mostly because users probably won't want to do much with their BB's other than email. Still, we support several hundred BB's with one part time BB analyst and one part time BES admin. We would definitely need far more staff and man hours to support Droids in our environment.
That said, not all businesses are the same. A Droid could be better suited in another environment.
