Lotus Traveler on Android - What's good and what's not

I dropped my BB Bold in late december and started to use a new HTC Desire HD in january. My Bold served as a mobile mail and calendar client primarily and I didn’t use it to surf the web or install apps on it. So seeing all those iPhones and Android Smartphones out there with so many more capabilities than my Bold I definitely wanted one too. I am no Apple fan and haven’t had any Apple device at all so my choice was Android. I checked the market and finally went with the Desire HD. The BB Torch was on my list for a couple of minutes but I reckon Android the better and more flexible system.

Now with this decision made and the loss of my BB Enterprise Server connection I was happy that Lotus Traveler for android had just been released. Now after 6 weeks of intensive usage I want to share my impressions. Here are the things I like and the things that could be better:

What I like

• Writing texts on my Bold was quick and easy and when you are used to that you do not want to step back and go for the worse. So I was sceptical about the touch keyboard but I must say, it’s almost as quick and easy to write on as it was on my Bold. I know this is nothing traveler handles but to me it’s one of the most important issues when using traveler.
• Adding recipients to mails or calendar entries is so easy. Just type names and you get a list of matches from your contacts. And here is the good news: It’s not only contacts from your LN N&A or your corporate directory, it’s also contacts from your Facebook, … accounts as long as you allow them to synchronise with your device.
• Calendar entries can be marked private. I heard that this was impossible with prior versions of Traveler, but it works like a charm with Traveler 8.5.2. This is an important feature to me since we use our own GroupCalendar solution that grabs all appointments from my personal calendar and I want to keep my private appointments private.

What I don’t like so far

• Calendar handling lacks some functions. Repeating meetings planned in the Notes Client cannot be edited in Traveler. I can only accept or reject invitations but I can’t add a comment. Delegation is not yet implemented, …
• Synchronisation does not work like it should. This might be an internal problem but it is annoying whatsoever. After a couple of days of smooth synchronisation it simply stops telling me that the server does not answer. The server log says that the device’s security settings are not allowed and synchronisation is therefore prohibited. Rebooting the server solves the problem. We now decided to reboot the server once a night.
• The signature does not allow CR/LF so you have to cope with a single lined signature. There is no way to configure a server-side signature for the devices either so this has to be improved as soon as possible.

Are you using Traveler as well? What are your impressions? What do you think has to be improved / implemented soon?

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