DominoKeys.com

I LOVE my iPhone. I have more stories about how handy the device is and how it would seriously be tough for me to live without it.

Since AT&T announced that it is now available on their corporate plans AND since Lotus announced support for the iPhone, my inbox has been flooded with questions from employees asking when they can get one.

In the last few years, I’ve spent a lot of time researching solutions to deliver mobile phone functionality for our users. In the end, we went with GOOD (now from Motorola). Their software is amazing, especially with Notes/Domino. Email arrives on your phone faster than it does in your Notes client (even when plugged directly into the network and working off the server). Contacts work seamlessly and the calendar is outstanding. The interface for GOOD is consistent across every device that is supported, so its easy for people to change phones. And, the administration of it is very simple (read: doesn’t take time for an Admin to manage at all!)

As much as I love the iPhone – it doesn’t do any of the above items NEARLY as well as our other mobile devices using GOOD software. In short, the problems that remain for Domino users wanting to use the iPhone include:

• Email requires IMAP to be running on the Domino server (and takes up more CPU than it should to do it) and doesn’t delete messages (even when running it in the “Exchange” mode I’ve read about).
• Email arrives only when the phone goes to check for it (every X-minutes).
• Every calendar entry needs to be exported out of Notes and into Apple’s iCal, then you have to sync.
• Changes to a contact (or new ones) need to be exported out of Notes into Apple’s Address Book, then you have to sync.
• Sync’ing only happens when you plug in the iPhone.
• The Notes support will be in the form of an ultra-light DWA (Domino Web Access) website, which means you have to go look and find contacts, calendar entries and email (and most likely, log in each time). Ignoring the fact that its annoying to have to do all that, the iPhone still is an EDGE device and is much slower than its 3G counterparts.

Now, I tolerate all of that because I really use the heck outta my iPhone and because I already use the Apple address book and iCal for other reasons (which may go away as the Notes client gets better with supporting iCal subscriptions – posting and subscribing). But for all other users in my company, I simply can’t recommend the device as being “better” than what they have now – for their business purposes.

It pains me to say that. But today, its true.