I am trying to ascertain if Blackberry has made any stride in implementing the IMAP4 email protocol into Blackberry Internet Service (BIS).

Last time my employer and I looked at a Blackberry Solution, it could poll our server and send any new mail that it found to the mailbox owners Berry. At the time it would not even one-way SYNC with our server and we determined that it was not worth the expenditure.

Since that time, we have outfitted our mobile staff with SonyEricsson mobile phones which naively support IMAP4 and implement IMAP_IDLE fairly well. It will even bi-directional flag read mail after a period of time (usually when it finds new mail and syncs up). It's largest downside is that the phone is not able to sync with the sent-mail folder on our server.

We are again looking at a Berry solution via BIS (since IMAP4 is not supported naively via BES) and we were wondering if anything had changed over the years since we last looked at a Berry solution.

I understand from this forum that there is some sort of one-way reconciliation (Berry --> Server), but that seems to be the extent of it. I read one thread where a poster said that eventually the Berry will bi-directionally sync Read/Un-Read flags but that seems to be unconfirmed.

We are not looking for instantaneous deliver of mail (although it would be nice), however we are looking for fairly good reconciliation of mail between our server and the mobile device in our staff's hands. Can Blackberry and the subsequent BIS service fulfill our needs or should we keep looking for a better solution?

Thanks,
Dan

Long story short...here goes:

1) BIS now supports IMAP-idle. Therefore, you get instant delivery for IDLE compliant servers
2) Sent emails on the BB show up in the Sent mail on your email server. Deleted emails is two way sync (if you wish)

Hope that helps!

A few follow ups,

1) Is the IMAP-idle support new with BIS2.7?
2) What about read/un-read/replied to flags?

Thanks,
Dan

It should be synced for both. I do believe it was a bit after BIS 2.5...they had IDLE turned on, then off, then 3 months later, the feature was turned on again - all very hush hush

Anything read/deleted from the BB will sync to the web interface (depending on service)

But it will NOT sync both way, only from the BB.