New York, Kevin Smith, April 15 2010.

In mid 2009 Andy Rubin promised the Android community that we would have Exchange Activesync support in the near future.  This missing feature was holding back most of corporate America from adopting Android into their culture.  After what seems like a lifetime of anticipation, Android 2.1 brings EAS support to our handsets.  That’s not to say it has perfect integration, but were no longer relying on 3rd party apps (Touchdown) to do the job for Android.

It didn’t take long for most people to notice a major flaw in EAS on Android handsets; the phone completely ignores the timed lock policy for EAS and instead requires you to enter an alphanumeric password each and every time you unlock or ‘wake up’ your phone. 

Introducing LockPicker! [Market link].  LockPicker is a small, free application that runs in the background of your Android phone and prevents you from entering the EAS alphanumeric password.  If it were not for this application, I, along with many others, would not be using their Android device to retrieve corporate email.  For those who truly enjoy this small gem, the developer also has a version of this app [Market link] you can purchase.  Think of it as expressing your appreciation monetarily.

Warning:  Your IT and Data security teams will not approve of nor appreciate this application.  Use this at your own risk.  Fair warning!

Rating: 5 Stars