no.
Oh, you want me to explain too?
Sheesh, you want everything don't ya?
Ok, so yes, I do actually have, dare I call it, *intimate* knowledge of how the BB works its push, and how MS does its push.
Why you call MS's "fake" is beyond me, though. It is designed about as similarly as possible without infringing patents, and if you're going to call one "fake", they both should be.
Why? Because real all devices, including Blackberrys, "pull" their email. What happens is the BB holds an idle connection to their server, which waits to receive new email. When the server receives a new message, it sends a tiny blip of a command to the BB which tells it to check and pull new messages NOW. Without that blip notification, the BB wouldn't receive any new messages. If you want to get technical, the only thing really receiving the emails "pushed" is the server, when then notifies the handset to pull.
(By the way, blackberry's servers still have to check public email addresses on 15 min intervals. So, your yahoo, gmail, hotmail, etc. will all be 15 min delayed by default.)
Exchange works the same way. The phone sits with a connection open and waits for the service to send a notification command to sync, which it will then do.
So why is it different?
Well, I'll go out on a limb here and say it could be any number of circumstances surrounding just YOU.
You're running a smartflip, which is a WM5 device that, if you kept up to date, should be at least running aku2. Aku2 barely introduced push email, and in fact had a few bugs with some of its new features.
Notably, A2DP had major issues with sound quality, and exchange sync did not yet support the advanced features (error corrections, html support, search emails not even on your device, etc), which was all fixed in WM6.
Another thing to take into consideration is that you're running your own exchange server, you said.
Blackberry's servers are constantly maintained on an industrial level, and probably far more reliable than your box unless you're renting a dedicated server and constantly maintaining it.
The best exchange experience for you will probably be running a hosted exchange service.
I am currently running WM6.1 with an exchange server 2007 box of my own. I do this because I do not want to pay for hosted exchange anymore, but the box is not as reliable as the hosted one. Things do get delayed because of cable's smtp servers and/or the power of my single server's resources.
But, my push experience is VERY good, just as good as sms. If I get a call, I still get my emails right after (barely a minute delay at most).
By the way, if you want to really blow your mind, it sounds like your problem is the edge/voice tradeoff. Did you know that 3G GSM devices support simultaneous voice and data?
Yeah, that means if you took the plunge for a modern device like the Tilt, you'd get your emails *while on the phone*.
Take that, your turn.
