Google updates iPhone experience

By Stephen Withers
Tuesday, 15 January 2008 00:50

Mobility

Google has streamlined the user interface of its suite of web applications for the iPhone.

Changes include general improvements to the UI (especially with regard to ease of use on a touch screen), a customisable main menu bar for rapid access to favourite applications, automatically refreshing Gmail inboxes, auto-completion of contacts' addresses when composing emails, a month view in Calendar, and access to iGoogle gadgets.

"These new features provide iPhone users with a desktop-like Google web application experience in terms of ease-of-use, speed, and feature richness but optimized for the iPhone," Google officials said.

"We plan to expand this experience to international versions of the iPhone and to other platforms that offer similar usability and browser capabilities."

Google automatically delivers the revised iPhone suite when www.google.com is accessed from the iPhone's Safari browser.