More on the Treo and Exchange ActiveSync

This afternoon I had a call with the PR folks from PalmOne to get their take on the Exchange ActiveSync for Treo announcement. As is to be expected, they were mum on the details most people really want. The new devices, which they didn’t explicitly name, are being released “this fall– before the end of the year”. When I asked if they were prepared to say which carriers would offer them, all I got was a chuckle.

Interestingly, Palm sees Exchange ActiveSync support as broadening the market for their devices by making them attractive to sites that might otherwise have standardized on Windows Mobile. Since they already support Good and BlackBerry, this is a credible argument.

Unfortunately, the initial implementation of Exchange ActiveSync doesn’t have feature parity with the Windows Mobile version. You get wireless access to, and synchronization of, your inbox and calendar: no subfolders, and no wireless contact sync. For their target market, this isn’t a big deal. You can still sync contacts via the desktop conduit, and you can create multiple profiles in VersaMail so that your desktop-synced mail profiles have your subfolders. There’s no support for Always Up-to-Date, either. Future releases will improve the Exchange ActiveSync feature set, but the PalmOne reps said that they had not yet decided on a schedule, or a delivery method, for those future releases. That’s fair, too; after all, they have to ship the first release first.