Considering how much people rely on email these days I find i incredible that with all the new programs that come out for the symbian OS there doesn't appear to be a decent push email client.
I did a quick search on the web and found 2 apps, Emoze and Roadsync. Tried both of these and thought I'd give my thoughts on each.
Emoze (www.emoze.com)
The benefits of this app is that it's free (the magic word for some, however I'd be happy to pay for an app if it actually did a good job)
I'm using OWA and not the pc gateway option, so I can't comment on the PC gateway version.
Unlike most programs, it was easy to install with good onscreen instructions. I entered my OWA username, password and server address. The connection was made and my emails and calendar were sync'd...nice and easy. Emails arrived on my phone almost instantly and calendar appointments were all there as well.
One downside is that whenever an email is received the phone doesn't actually "wake up". A tone is heard and the phone vibrates if this is set, but no lights or nothing on the screen saver to indicate an email (like the little envelope when you have a text message). There is a box that is displayed on the main screen telling you that a new email has arrived however. You can also set an option in the program to display a little icon in the top right hand corner of the screen that changes depending on whether you have an unread email or not, although it looks a little out of place on the screen.
Emails that are sent from the phone have a signature added that says Sent by Emoze Push Mail, nothing too intrusive.
Sadly whilst calendar invites are sent to the phone, there doesn't appear to be a way to accept or decline.
My biggest bug though is the lack of support. The site has a link to instructions for symbian phones, but for at least 3 weeks this has been saying "we are updating this document, please check back". In addition, I registered for the forum over 2 weeks ago and am still waiting for moderators approval (have even sent them an email to request an update on this....nothing back as yet). It seems that there is a lack of development going on with this application, which is a shame.
I then tried Roadsync (available from www.dataviz.com). This app costs $29.99 but there is a 30 day trial available
Again, simple to set up (same details needed as emoze).
The first problem I encountered was that our company hasn't registered it's security certificate with verisign, so the phone refuses to proceed automatically (untrusted security certificate warning) and so I had to manually accept. I have since copied our certificate to the phone but still receive this error. This essentially means that emails are not pushed all the time as there seems to be a time out, after which you have to manually accept the untrusted certificate again, a bit annoying but perhaps not a fault of Roadsync so I can't blame them for that one.
Roadsync is a lot more configurable than emoze. You can set times/days where push email is active, and other times when a manual sync is required. This means that should an email arrive in your inbox at 2 in the morning (if this is outside your "active" hours) it wont get pushed to your phone and wake you up. As soon as the time reaches "active" again, the emails will be pushed.
The push time was slightly longer too, sometimes taking up to 6-7 mins before arriving on my phone.
You have the option to attach your own signature (even a bus card can be used) and no extra signature is added.
Sadly, for some reason any recurring appointments in my calendar would not sync. Support had no reason for this and after trying their suggestions, I gave up. All other items were in my calendar, just not recurring ones.
Unlike Emoze, you can accept or decline calendar invitations.
Now for the worst bit...your phone will make a sound/vibrate if an email is received. if you miss this then there is NOTHING to tell you that an email has arrived. no icon, no lights flashing, nothing!!...the only way to find out is to go to your inbox.
This coupled with the calendar issues (and the security annoyance) means that for now, I have reverted back to emoze.
I can live without the ability to accept/decline invitations, but I need my calendar up to date with all my appts and some sort of indication that a mail has arrived.
I'll have to keep looking for something better as I love my N95 and don't want blackberry. Just wish i could have the functionality of the bb.
if anyone has any other suggestions, I'd love to hear them