Funambol offers native iPhone sync app

Ahead of Apple's official support for third-party native iPhone applications, mobile messaging company Funambol on Thursday announced it has released an open-source native app for iPhone contact synchronization. Requiring users to hack their iPhone, the Funambol plug-in for iPhone synchronizes the iPhone's address book with contacts from popular sources such as Yahoo! Mail, Gmail, Microsoft Outlook, GNOME Evolution and SyncML servers such as the Funambol server. The native application requires that users "jailbreak" or hack their iPhone to run third-party applications.

While recent Apple iPhone updates have disabled previous hacks and made it harder for new updates, innovative hackers have found a security flaw to 'jailbreak' their phones (and iPod touch), but reports indicate that a forthcoming update from Apple -- v1.1.2 which is expected to ship with iPhones in the UK this Friday -- will, once gain, break the latest jailbreak hacks.

Funambol, which provides open source-based mobile email, contacts and calendars for 1.5 billion mobile devices, notes that until now, contact synchronization on the iPhone was possible only using a cable connected to a computer running iTunes; the new Funambol plug-in is the first open-source native app for iPhone address book synchronization, it claimed.

"In mobile, the open road is the only road. The pace of development must be rapid, the compatibility wide and the cost reasonable. Open networks and devices are on the rise and are transforming the mobile industry," said Fabrizio Capobianco, CEO of Funambol. "The Funambol open source community has been operating at this pace for years and is delivering innovation that give people access to features they otherwise wouldn't have."

The Funambol iPhone plug-in was developed in large part by community member Patrick Ohly based on SyncEvolution, which provides the core syncing capabilities. Funambol adapted the plug-in's user interface from its work with other mobile devices.

Earlier this year, Funambol announced its over-the-air (OTA) web-based contacts app for the iPhone and the company said it looks forward to extending the iPhone plug-in for capabilities such as calendar sync and push email when Apple releases the official iPhone SDK in the first quarter of 2008.

Filed under: software