GMail for Mobile grows up: 2.0 now available
I am enjoying working with GMail on the T-Mobile G1 due to its tight integration with all things Google. Working with GMail on other phones has not been too shabby with GMail for Mobile and today they’ve announced the release of the next version 2.0. This new version supports any phone using J2ME and Blackberries and has the following features according to Google:
- Overall performance improvement: You should experience significant raw speed improvement, smoother scrolling, and no freezing.
- Multiple accounts management:If you have both a Gmail and Google Apps email account, you can easilyswitch between them quickly. You will no longer have to use twodifferent mobile apps to access personal and work emails.
- Multiple mobile email drafts: You can save multiple email drafts in your mobile phone, so that you can pick and choose what you would like to send later.
- Powerful shortcut keys:If you have a QWERTY phone, you can use shortcut keys. Hit ‘z’ to undo,’k’ to go to a newer conversation, and ‘j’ to go to an olderconversation. See Menu/Help in the app for more shortcuts.
- Basic offline support:Can’t get a signal? Not a problem. You can compose and read your mostrecent emails even when there is no signal. Also, any outgoing messageswill be saved in the outbox on your phone and sent automatically whenyou’re back in coverage.
That’s pretty significant, especially that last one that lets you compose and read email even when offline. Google is proud that this new version supports 35 different languages too. Kudos to Google for continuing to make improvements to the mobile version of GMail, even though the Google phone is now out.
Just go here using your mobile browser to download this new version. Here’s a little video to show off the new GMail Mobile 2.0:
I just started trying out Gmail 2.0 yesterday. So far I like…so much so that I’ve turned off receiving emails from my Gmail accounts using the BlackBerry mail feature. The only thing I’ve noticed is that it is not “instant” like the BlackBerry mail, but for my usage pattern, that is fine.
It’s not working for me on my Treo 700wx with the Esmertec JRE. I get the error message “Sorry, Gmail for mobile will not work on your phone. Your phone doesn’t have the appropriate certificate to communicate with the server. Try accessing Gmail for mobile on your mobile browser at http://mail.google.com“
strange, because the previous Gmail java client ran fine (albeit with the known freezing and performance problems).
It works on my Touch Pro, but the font is way too tiny to read. I guess it’s set up for QVGA screens? Can’t see a menu option to change the font size within the app either
ah, there is a setting screen and an option to increase the font size on the Java app, but the font is still too tiny to read. Oh well, always the browser option
Yeah, I like Gmail 2.0 a lot, but what’s up with the tiny font and no way to change it? It’s really a strain to read emails with the text that small. Seems like that wouldn’t be such a difficult option to include — and it was there in older versions.
I think the fact that they continue improving their apps for third-party platforms is wise as with the Android platform they first have to ensure adoption of the platform itself and it must take some time and energy. I think focusing on the apps that will only run on Android would be very similar to only supporting various Google applications in Chrome and forgetting about other browsers.