Mark C. Langston wrote:
On Wed, Mar 10, 2004 at 12:30:04PM -0800, Kelson Vibber wrote:Sorry this is just wrong ( IMHO :-) )
At 12:05 PM 3/10/2004, Mark C. Langston wrote:
There are phones, today, with SMTP clients on them. Those phones are becoming more, not less, popular. The addition of SMTP clients to phones is becoming more, not less, common.Right. Therefore, now is the best time to encourage phone manufacturers to make them capable of SMTP-AUTH: *before* SMTP-capable phones become widespread.
It's easier to upgrade a small installed base than a large one.
I agree. But those phones that are coming are already in the finishing phases of development and testing; the models to be introduced later this year and early next are largely finished. I doubt very much that the current state of email is such that any of these companies sees a need to undo the feature freeze and implement an SMTP client rewrite.
Thus, the coming phones wom't have SMTP AUTH, MSA, STARTTLS, or other such support. And all the Sony-Ericcsons, Nokias, Blackberries, Motorolas, Handspring/Palm smartphones that are already in the hands of consumers are somewhat difficult to upgrade.
Sure, perhaps some third party may write such a client for those few
phones based on relatively open platforms (the Palm and WinCE
smartphones), but most other vendors have a relatively high
barrier-to-entry for your typical OSS developer, in terms of license and
IDE fees for their developer programs.
Further, phone companies seem notoriously slow about pushing new or upgraded firmware to phone capable of OTA updates. Few if any consumers are even aware that they can walk into a retail outlet and request a firmware update in person.
So, what you're left with is an entire market segment that's got a huge inertia problem (both from the business and technical end) that WILL have a large installed base by the time this becomes an issue.
Which is why it's apropos to discuss and find solutions to the problem now, rather than when the problem has come to the fore post-deployment.
a) some phones have smtp-auth ( my p900 does)
b) smart phones run an operating systen - if the email client does not do what you want/the market needs, just install an app that does
they will surely be produced if there is a demand/need - my phone has an awful browser on it so I installed Opera
-- Clive
