Help needed in switch from Blackberry to Motorola Droid

May 26, 2010 12:34 PM

My wife is about to switch from Blackberry to Motorola Droid. Couple questions after the jump. Thanks!

Question 1:
Are the meeting invitations received via email automatically inserted into the Motorola Droid calendar upon opening the email?

Question 2:
She has 3 email accounts, say A, B and C. Accounts A and B are business (separate servers) and C is her gmail. When she gets invitations via email, Blackberry calendar keeps track of which email account the invitations are received. She syncs the calendar with Outlook and also with Google Calendar. The BB Calendar items associated with accounts B and C sync with Outlook and GCal but the items associated with account A are not synced (in neither Outlook nor GCal, which makes me think this is a BB related problem).
Does the Motorola Droid calendar care (or keep track of) which email account you are using to receive the invitation, if so, does this create a problem in syncing?

I tried finding an answer in Blackberry and Droid forums with no luck.

Question 3:
She has separate inboxes for different email accounts on her Blackberry, and she likes it that way. Can it be done in Droid? This article says so, but I'd like Droid users' answer for this.



Thanks for the help.

posted by eebs to technology (7 answers total)

I'm afraid I'm not sure about 1 and 2, since I believe they use the corporate calendar app which I'm unfamiliar with, but 3 is definitely possible.

However I'd note that the built in e-mail client for non gmail is perhaps somewhat lacking (though supposedly 2.2 fixes it). I'd strongly recommend she download the free k9 email program which supposedly has better exchange support.
posted by gryftir at 12:57 PM on May 26, 2010

So there are 2 different calendar apps, one is your google calendar and one is called "corporate calendar" for use with an exchange server. They will both automatically add invitations to your calendar.

To my knowledge it doesn't care what email is used to receive the invitation, though my situation is not as complicated. I'm sure others are more informed than I will add more information, but I came to say, understanding custom IMAP folders (and using IMAP instead of POP) will greatly smooth your transition.
posted by fontophilic at 1:03 PM on May 26, 2010

1. I don't think so, but I'm by no means positive. I believe you have to respond "Yes" or "Maybe" to opt-in to the event and have it added to your calendar, but I was just perusing the settings and found a "Hide declined events" checkbox. So take that as you will.

2. I don't really have experience with this as I only have a Gmail account and another IMAP account that never gets calendar invites. The calendar doesn't seem to track email addresses, but that's because the calendar on the phone is, I'm pretty sure, basically just the Google Calendar associated with your primary Gmail account. I'm not really sure how it handles multiple email addresses or how the Corporate Calendar app works, because that one seems to only be for Exchange support.

3. Inboxes seem to be kept separate by default. I'm not sure if there even is a universal inbox for multiple accounts. There are also two separate email programs -- Gmail and Email. The Gmail app is specifically for Gmail accounts, and the Email app (which could potentially be used for a Gmail account, I suppose) is for anything else.

Regardless of how the stock applications work, there are enough other clients for both calendar and email floating around out there the she can have basically any kind of functionality that she wants, though she might have to pay for it.
posted by malthas at 1:04 PM on May 26, 2010

The answer to question 2 depends (or at least may depend) on what her work setup is for accounts "A" and "B". Is she using a BES server at work or just forwarding some work-related email address through BIS? You say she "gets invitations through email". Are you referring only to invitations that arrive through email (ie, do not come from Exchange servers -- maybe CalDAV?), or any calendaring data?

These pieces of information may or may not help me answer the question, but I know I can't answer it without them.
posted by The Bellman at 1:12 PM on May 26, 2010

Regardless of how the stock applications work, there are enough other clients for both calendar and email floating around out there the she can have basically any kind of functionality that she wants, though she might have to pay for it.

By the way, this isn't necessarily true. If your wife is used to a Blackberry device and is using BES at work and switches to an Android device, the transition won't necessarily be smooth. People here use both and come to me with the problems (despite my having outsourced our IT to avoid just that... grrrr). The fact is that people love their Android devices for all kinds of good reasons, and the OS has gotten better at Exchange integration, but it's still no Blackberry in that area. There is simply no one who does Exchange integration as well as RIM -- not even Microsoft.
posted by The Bellman at 1:16 PM on May 26, 2010

Thanks for the answers; all helpful.

@The Bellman:
She is not using BES server at work. She has setup up all the email accounts on the BB by herself without needing much help from any IT people at work. Account A, the one that fails to sync, is using SquirrelMail, and account B is a custom WebMail program configured to run IMAP. I believe the invitations are largely originating from Outlook.
posted by eebs at 2:48 PM on May 26, 2010

The answer to question 1) is 'no'.

The inbuilt corporate calendar program kind of does, but makes you actually go to the calendar to find the appointment to accept it. Not user friendly.

I use Touchdown for Exchange for my exchange account which processes invites in the same location as your email (like most every other email / calendaring app).

Both programs are kind of sucky at reliably presenting invitations using YOUR timezone if the sender was (a) in a different timezone, and (b) using a non-PC Outlook client. Only PC Outlook tends to translate the local timezone stuff into the comment part of the message in your local timezone.

Only Windows Mobile clients seem to get this stuff right all the time.
posted by blue_wardrobe at 3:32 PM on May 26, 2010