The ITS Department understands there is a growing interest in smartphone devices like the iPhone, Blackberry, and Palm PRE.  We would like our community members to consider the following information before making a decision about which device or service to purchase.

First you should talk to Kathy Arnholt (X6284) in the Purchasing Office. She is up to date on the preferred vendors providing service to Denison University.

ITS has experience setting up the Palm Treo "p" models and Palm Centro with Verizon as a carrier. These units work well with the Oracle Calendar application supported by ITS and interface easily with our email service. The Treo "w" models (Windows Mobile Operating System) have exhibited some stability problems and are harder to synchronize with Oracle Calendar.  The Palm PRE does not have a sync client that works with Oracle Calendar.

Any smartphone which has an email client that supports imap email can be configured to receive your Denison email.

To configure your smartphone device to communicate with your Denison email, view this page: http://www.denison.edu/offices/computing/configuring_email_clients.html 

Oracle Calendar can export your calendar information into an iCalendar (.ics) file.  Many applications that your smartphone may synchronize with can import that ics file.  You are not truly "synchronizing" your Oracle Calendar information with your phone using this method, but it is a way of getting the Oracle Calendar information into your smartphone.