Gmail for mobile phones has been available for some time now, offering a faster experience that simply visiting the Gmail website on your phone’s browser.
Although Gmail was updated with a 1.05 version a while back, the new 2.0 version is miles better, and the upgrade that Gmail users on mobile phones have been waiting for.
Announced over at the Google Mobile blog by Derek Phillips, a software engineer in the Google Mobile Team, we learn that Phillips unsurprisingly works on Gmail, uses it all the time on his phone, and is “always looking for ways to make it faster, more robust and easier to use.”
That’s great to hear, because the last couple of versions of Gmail for mobile were slow to load, and while the original version would often crash with Java exception errors, at least the second version would let you continue on by trying again, which was a nice improvement.
Well, the “third” version, which is officially “version 2.0”, is even better still, and works on J2ME-supported mobiles and BlackBerry phones.
I’m using in on an N96 and N95, although I have tried it on other devices, and can confirm that the Gmail team’s efforts to “make the experience faster and more reliable” have certainly borne fruit.
That said, if you are a Motorola RAZR user, there are a few reports in the 99+ messages of feedback to the blog post that say Razr's report not enough memory, despite there reportedly being enough memory, with some users posting links to earlier working versions for those that want the choice to go back.
Meanwhile a number of Windows Mobile users are complaining there's no Windows Mobile version, but they must mean a native WM version, because if you have Java on your WM device, you can run it through that.
Ok, back to Gmail for mobile 2.0 - Phillips says that: “We rearchitected the entire client to push all the processing to the background, greatly improve the client-side caching scheme and optimize every bottleneck piece of code we came across” – and then asks, “so, what does this all mean for you?”
All the new features and details are on page 2, plus a reminder to check both sets to settings! Please read on...
Got Gmail on your phone? Uninstall it now, quick!
Why? Because you’ll need to so you can install the brand new Gmail for mobile 2.0 instead!
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Alex Zaharov-Reutt
One of Australia’s best-known technology journalists and consumer tech experts, Alex has appeared in his capacity as technology expert on all of Australia’s free-to-air and pay TV networks, including stints as presenter of Ch 10’s Internet Bright Ideas, Ch 7’s Room for Improvement and tech expert on Ch 9’s Today Show, among many other news and current affairs programs.
