Today it is critical to get a mobile phone that will help you work while you are away from the office. Mobile phones have evolved and now offer surprisingly effective solutions for managing your calendar, your contacts, and even your business data, no matter where you are.
Smart Phones
Smart phones have been built for business users and make quick work of e-mail, Web surfing, and business data.
BlackBerry is the standard of business phones. The BlackBerry handsets are defined by their easy to use keypads and stable software. Because of their wide adoption among large corporations, BlackBerrys integrate easily into business networks of all sizes. Every major cell phone provider offers a few BlackBerry plans, complete with e-mail and data services that let you synchronize the cell phone with PCs and servers at the office. Traditional BlackBerrys, such as the 8700 series, have spacious keypads for thumb typing. The smaller Pearl models use a technology called SureType to allow fast typing with multiple letters assigned to each key.
Windows Mobile is becoming more popular among business users are designed to offer a familiar Windows-style appearance along with data sycronizing with Microsoft Outlook.
Palm Treo smart phones maintain an important place among business phones because of their simple interface. Recently, Palm began offering Windows Mobile as an option, and also offers BlackBerry Connect service. These two options make it attractive for larger business networks.
Symbian the primary operating system used on Nokia smart phones. It has a variety of options for integration with business networks. Symbian is more popular in Europe than in United States.
iPhone from Apple. The iPhone is smart phone that integrates e-mail, a Web browser, and an iPod into one device. We still have still have to see whether the it will become popular the in the business world, but it's certainly a promising platform.
Nearly every cell phone on the market today includes a small camera, generally of fairly low quality, built into it. This can be troublesome for businesses protecting their trade secrets. Fortunately, many of the premium handsets mentioned above are available in both camera-equipped and without camera models.
Mobile E-Mail
Whether you have five employees or 50,000, you have several options for getting your e-mail on your mobile phone.
POP3 The most common type of mail server is the POP3 server. All true smart phones feature a POP3 mail client, which you can easily configure by entering the address of your server, your username, and your password. POP3 clients connect to the server at regular intervals to check for new mail and send out your messages.
Exchange Medium-size to large businesses often use Microsoft Exchange to manage e-mail and calendars together. This makes it easy for workers to automatically schedule appointments, and manage shared company resources such as conference rooms. Many smart phones support Exchange servers, which lets them automatically share all of your calendar, contact, and mail data through one connection. Exchange support is good on Windows Mobile devices.
BlackBerry e-mail uses a specialized server (either on the Internet or on your business network) to send incoming e-mail straight to your handset when it comes in.
Proprietary Sync Systems In addition to the technologies described above, some wireless carriers also offer their own services to sync e-mail and other data to your mobile device. These services often involve installing an application on your desktop PC, which then transfers information over the Internet to your handset, keeping your Outlook schedule, contacts, and e-mail syncronized between the PC and the phone.
David Herrmann is an internet marketer who is passionate about the latest innovations in wireless and mobile technology. For more cell phone reviews and news go to
