Exchange on the iPhone is Lacking

In using the iPhone 2.0 software with Exchange, I’ve come across a missing feature with the push email: only the Inbox gets push email. Any sub folders that you have require a manual send/receive to check for new mail. This is annoying, especially when a send/receive can take up to 20 seconds on a slow network. On Windows Mobile, all email folders are always up to date.

Secondarily, you can’t search the server. With Windows Mobile 6 and Exchange Server 2007, you can search through thousands of old email messages and not have to store them locally. With the iPhone, this important and useful feature doesn’t exist.

Update: It looks like Exchange on the iPhone is much more lacking than just these two issues. Apple should have called it “Exchange Lite”. Take a look at the dissection of missing features on Jason Langridge’s blog. Others he mentions: no flagging of email, no control over maximum attachment size, no support for ActiveSync scheduling, etc. He also points out shortcomings with the Calendar/Contacts aspect of the Exchange integration, such as: no invite function for meetings, no attendee status, etc. Thanks to surur for the tip!

Tags: Applictions, Exchange, iphone