Windows Phone 7: Exchange with Self-Signed Certificate

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I wonder if this is a game breaker.  Many corporate Exchange servers use a self-signed certificate, and push that certificate into client PC's root CA via group policy.

  • With desktop PCs, you can push that certificate and install it
  • With the iPhone, it seems that the phone can ignore this.
  • With Windows Mobile 6.5, you can install additional certificates.
  • But with Windows Phone 7, you can't install additional certificates, which means you can' synchronize with the Exchange server, unless you switch off HTTPS (bad - we're talking about synchronizing contact, emails over the air here…), or buy an expensive certificate from a trusted Root Certificate Authority.

Hopefully Microsoft fix this soon.

Windows Phone 7 - can I switch off the iPhone yet?

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One final check-list before turning the iPhone off:

  • Contacts - via Exchange - OK
  • Mail - via Exchange / Gmail - OK
  • Safari - will be so glad to see it gone - got IE
  • iPod - has Zune / podcasts loaded

Cloud is great.  Zune rocks.  Hurray no more iTunes.

Onto the apps:

  • Photos - sync Windows Live Photo Gallery - OK
  • Notes - HTC ships a notes / lists app, but I plan to use OneNote (sync to cloud)
  • Messages - nothing I need to keep
  • Facebook - has integrated, as well as app
  • Maps (Google) - to Bing Maps
  • Foursquare
  • Stocks - HTC ships a Stock app

Missing

  • Skype
  • Windows Live Messenger
  • Kindle - collection online
  • Echofon - will be using official Twitter app
  • Urbanspoon
  • Blizzard authenticator - disconnected iPhone authenticator from battle.net account

Games - bought lots of games - if I have an urge to play them again I might buy it again… otherwise thanks for all the fun times

  • Carcassonne
  • Oregon Trail
  • Pocket God
  • Civ Revolution
  • Bejeweled 2
  • PuzzleQuest
  • Babel Rising
  • Angry Birds
  • PvZ
  • DoodleJump
  • Zombie Smash
  • Doodle God
  • Helsing's Fire

Windows Phone 7 - SharePoint and Exchange

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This post is going to be a bit negative.  For users looking for Enterprise features in the first version of Windows Phone 7, I think I have to recommend wait.

 

The Office Tab

  • No out of box support for SharePoint 2007
  • No Windows Authentication (NTLM) for SharePoint 2010 - you will need to activate Forms Based Authentication

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/pstubbs/archive/2010/10/04/developing-windows-phone-7-applications-for-sharepoint-2010.aspx

 

Exchange

  • Same issue as previous Windows Mobile 6.5 in requiring a personal certificate to connect to your corporate Exchange.  I understand this is more secure, but when you could easily integrate with Facebook, Gmail and Hotmail but can't connect to your corporate Exchange it is a bit silly

 

On a positive note, the WP7 browser is excellent and renders both SP2007 and SP2010 perfectly.

Windows Phone 7 - need Zune

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I love Zune software - it is so much better than iTunes.  But actually to use and synchronize your Windows Phone 7 you don't really need Zune at all.

 

This one area where it suddenly asked me to connect to Zune was to grab Podcasts.  Personally I kind of wished that the phone would just synchronize without connecting to a computer, but on the other hand, if you had lots of music on your computer or network, you'll need Zune to get it synchronized onto the phone.

Zune is just pretty, and detects all the iTunes library effortlessly.

Windows Phone 7 : Facebook error 85FB4400

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Connecting and synchronizing my Windows Phone 7 - most things are smooth, but not everything.  Here's a few posts quickly listing my issues:

 

My Facebook seems to have been synchronized, but the synchronization page lists an error.  Users seem to be indicating that this is caused by missing pictures in the contacts. 

http://social.answers.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/windowsphone7/thread/3e791d84-cdae-45d2-945d-45916b2a9c25

Anyway, contacts and pictures seems to have been synchronized regardless.  So probably just unpolished software.