Information About Mobile Devices

Table of Contents

Apple iPhone

The Apple iPhone was originally conceived as a pure consumer product and lacked many features aimed at enterprise use. Because of this, AT&T did not make iPhones available to customers using corporate contracts (including UC Merced). In June 2008, an updated iPhone with more corporate features and pricing that is more in line with other available PDAs will be released. IT will be evaluating the integration features and make recommendations as to iPhone suitability for UC Merced employees. However, we already know that the new iPhone still does not support 3G or allow the battery to be replaced. We expect future models to incorporate additional improvements and will be evaluating them as they become available.

Cell Phone Acquisition

Although significant changes were planned in the way that we would acquire and pay for mobile devices for UC Merced faculty and staff, those changes are on hold pending Federal legislation that would nullify the need to make them. Our best guess at this point is that no significant changes will be made in mobile device procurement. In light of this, IT is investigating ways to improve the processing of cell phone bills, including making information available to each cell phone user via a portal application. Detailed information about available mobile devices and plans as well as how to order them is available on the portal at http://software.ucmerced.edu.

Campus Cell Phone Coverage

Many of our PDA users are configured to link directly to the campus email server, and directly access their email without using Microsoft's ActiveSync or a similar application. This employs tried and true technology, and is recommended by IT. We hope that the recent adoption of central SPAM filtering will improve the user experience from the PDA/Smart Phone perspective, and we will continue to evaluate technology that improves productivity with these devices.

Calendar and Email Synchronization

Agreement has been reached on all substantial points in both the contract and technical design for installing a permanent cell facility on campus. However, the process for obtaining complete sign-off, including permissions from the FCC, is lengthier than any of us would like. We are anticipating that the new facility will be operational sometime during the 08-09 academic year. At that time, we will have greater capacity, better coverage, and support for 3G speeds. Given the concrete and steel construction of many of our buildings, there will undoubtedly still be "dead" spots. With the permanent facility in place, we will be able to work with AT&T at that time to deploy pico-cell or similar technology where needed to ensure complete coverage on campus.

The implementation of calendaring standards has been less mature than email standards, resulting in greater difficulty in identifying software that allows direct access to the campus calendar server. Nevertheless, applications do exist and we have a number of users in beta test. However, because of a major bug in the current version of our calendar server, we have been unable so far to upgrade our server to the version that best supports these applications. As a result, we cannot recommend that most users install calendar synchronization applications on their mobile devices.

We are working with the vendor to resolve the server upgrade issue and hope to complete the upgrade over the summer (2008). At that time, current mobile device calendar synchronization applications will stop working and need to be upgraded to a compatible version. That version should resolve many known bugs that are being experienced by our beta testers, and, at that time, IT will provide support for the acquisition and configuration of those applications.


Looking for help?

We offer a number of tutorials and FAQs available in the Guides & FAQs section.

If you have any questions, problems, or comments, please contact the IT Help Desk via email at helpdesk@ucmerced.edu, via phone at 209.228.HELP (4357), or visit them in the Classroom and Office Building room 132A.