Jay Eye Sea

Ian Leader: About a year ago,  I posted a new years wish list that included “A decent Google mail…client for the Nokia E-series phones.” At the time I was using RoadSync to get push email from Exchange on my E51, and wondered if they might add IMAP support.

They left it almost to the last minute, but yesterday, Roadsync 5.0 for Symbian S60 was released, an now includes support for Google apps: push IMAP email, in addition to calendar and contacts sync through ActiveSync that’s been available since the summer.

I’m pleased to say that it does exactly what it says on the tin:

• It works with gmail.com and Google apps
• It syncs email to your device
• It lets you send email
• You don’t need to pay any service fees, or give your Google Apps password to any third party site
• it syncs the read unread status of your emails in both directions

It’s the last two points that might set it above the Blackberry. A Curve 8520 arrived in the post for me yesterday – the first time I’ve ever had a BlackBerry – and while I’m very impressed, the fact that it will only sync the read status of email in one direction (Blackberry -> Google Apps) seems completely unnecessary, as well as being quite annoying.  Given how long BlackBerry have been in the email game, I’m really surprised by this.

What about the cost? RoadSync 5.0 costs 50 USD – which is about the same as five months of the ‘BlackBerry option’ at SwissCom – so about 1/2 the price if you consider that RoadSync has been upgraded about once a year since 2007 (of course it’s still more expensive than on an iPhone or Android device – free s/w from Google and no service charges – but I need something to tide me over until we know what the Nexus One really is).

The BlackBerry still wins on one count though – you can have as many mailboxes as you like, whereas RoadSync only supports a connection to a single server. So you can’t sync both Google Apps for work and your personal Gmail. My only other complaint is that status flags / stars aren’t synchronised (Gmail does support this), although if you set a status flag on the device, it sets the email as unread in Google Apps – which is not really the right way to do it…

Anyway, on the whole, very posititive. Merry Christmas!