Nokia’s Mail for Exchange gets updates aplenty

Nokia may have the lead in market share globaly when it comes to phones, however that market share doesn’t mean they’re the best.  Most of Nokia’s numbers come from low end handsets.  What really has driven smartphones in years past is enterprise support for large coporations.  In this regard, Nokia has fallen short mulitple times.  Nokia brought to market Mail for Exchange (MfE) in order to get a foot in the door of the corporate world and is slowly trying to wiggle their way further inside.  With the latest update that they have just released many problems are addressed in hopes of finally making larger strides business land.  The features are just after the click.

The latest 2.9.158 MfE update brings many new fixes and features to the table which include:

• Calendar, Contacts, Tasks, are disabled by default on new installs. This is a safegaurd to keep the less technically inclined from deleting said information.
• Out of Office (OoO) messages are now accessed on the server when ever accessed instaed of periodically at set intervals.
• Greatly improved battery life for Exchange operation.  If the device realizes the connection is low to non-existant it will switch to a 15 minute poll mode to save juice.
• Mail for Exchange setting tabs are now always displayed on screen instead of being dynamic.
• Users are now able to manage your device by name instead of IMEI via Outlook Web Access (OWA) email client (if account allows). Device management such as device wiping is now possible for OWA users.  Also, the phone model is now displayed in the status field.
• Contacts with pictures can now be synced
• Access Point Groups/Destinations — Mail for Exchange now can actively switch between WiFi and GPRS connections automatically if your phone supports Destinations. This feature is only available on S60 3rd Edition, Feature Pack 2 and S60 5th Edition phones.

The last feature is perhaps the best feature as before you had to set up a connection type or “profile”.  For example if you had a profile set to WiFi and WiFi wasn’t available, even with a cell signal, the app using that particular profile wouldn’t function.  Stupid I know.  However, now the device will support multiple connection technologies via groups.  So it isn’t 100% fixed and autonomous, however it is a much better step in a new directoin.  I highly recomend picking up this latest update to get the latest out of  your Nokia smartphone.

Source: Boy Genius, Symbian-Guru, Nokia