Visto wins 'Symbian Approved' status
Mobile email company Visto has become the first "Symbian Approved" push email provider.
The company announced on Tuesday that it had successfully completed the Symbian Email Validation Programme, which was recently established to define industry-agreed quality guidelines.
Push email allows wireless synchronisation between mobile devices and a company's server, meaning that emails automatically appear on a device when received on the server. Deleting an email on the device will do the same on the server.
Such solutions have been available previously on Symbian's mobile operating system, but according to Sanjay Daswani, Visto's head of marketing for Europe, the Middle East and Africa, the new hallmark will help Visto get its products to market more quickly.
"Having accreditation is going to allow us to streamline the process [when working with partners]," Daswani told ZDNet UK at the Symbian Smartphone Show in London on Tuesday. "When we build a client for devices, being certified means we don't have to go through the whole certification process [every time]."
Daswani added that the programme meant Symbian now viewed mobile email as an "integral part of the user experience [and a] key killer application."
The validation programme covers various aspects of the push email experience such as ease of use and the way the application interfaces with the rest of the operating system and other native applications.
Visto — which is a white-label product, allowing operators to rebadge it — works across a range of operating systems, including Symbian and Windows Mobile, and is compatible with various email groupware servers such as Lotus Notes, Microsoft Exchange and POP3.
The company claims this makes it easier to deploy without expensive device or server upgrades, or having to reconfigure firewalls.