So I bit the bullet and jumped head-first into the realm of 21st century mobile communications and obtained one of these, so I could have my email on the go. As a result of this decision, I consolidated all of my email into my GMail account so that I could sync it with the Blackberry. Around the same time, Google announced that GMail was gaining IMAP access. This is a good thing, because it means that my email can be synced across all of my devices and everything can now be seen in perfect sync. Great, right?
Except, not so much. IMAP access over the Blackberry is so slow that it’s ridiculous. Apparently, this is due to several factors, including that RIM’s BIS service (that’s the service that pushes email to your Blackberry) does not support IMAP-IDLE, which you need to make this stuff work correctly. All it translates to is a less than satisfactory experience for me and feeling like I’ve wasted this time and my excitement, because the whole point was to have a device that allowed me to see my email and keep it in perfect sync with the web and desktop versions thereof. Apparently, as a consumer and not someone in the corporate world (using the Blackberry Enterprise Server solution allows this, which is what you use in a corporate environment with Outlook or Lotus Notes), this remains a mythical thing for me. Oh well. At least my device is cool.
Technorati Tags: blackberry, gmail, google, imap
