Gmail Mobile rocks!

I’ve been trying out the new Gmail Mobile email service on my mobile phone.

It’s great. Easy-to-navigate presentation of information. Easy to manage my emails, from reading to replying to composing a new message. Very fast site loading, although that may be a lot to do with a strong 3G network connection.

The richness of how the information looks on screen is a vast improvement on what it looked like before when I last accessed Gmail on my mobile. That was sometime in September. Perhaps the phone has something to do with it.

I now have a Nokia N73 – it came with my new phone contract with Vodafone UK – which has a massive screen with the best resolution I’ve seen on any mobile phone. (Plus a fab 3.2 megapixel camera with Carl Zeiss optics – can’t wait to get back into moblogging again.)

One curious thing to me is that my Gmail account is now shown as Google Mail, not Gmail. My account definitely is Gmail and my email address remains with the ‘@gmail.com’ suffix, so I’m guessing this could be because I’m accessing Gmail from within the UK. This relates to Google having to rename the Gmail service in the UK last year.

Whatever it’s called, Gmail Mobile rocks!

Neville Hobson

Social Strategist, Communicator, Writer, and Podcaster with a curiosity for tech and how people use it. Believer in an Internet for everyone. Early adopter (and leaver) and experimenter with social media. Occasional test pilot of shiny new objects. Avid tea drinker.

  1. Stephen Davies

    I think it’s great too, Neville. However, every time I want to check my emails I have to log in with my username and password. It’s a bit of a pain if, like me, you check emails on your phone multiple times a day.

    For that reason alone I’m sticking with the mobile web version.

  2. Dave

    Gah! It just crashes my phone (a Sony W700i) everytime I try it.

    I really think that the future of the web will be in portable devices like these. I note that Lee has just got himself a PDA, but I think these are just too big to be the future of portable computing – if you can’t comfortably shove it in a pocket, then why just just take one of the tiny laptops that are now available?

    I think the phone is where it’s at – and the one thing the Blueberry has that I like is the full keyboard and a reasonably sized screen in a small, pocketable, package.

    One way for such a device to work well would be to have a fully operational but scaled down version of FireFox that effectively acts as the device’s OS, with a host of web-hosted services. So, taking Google as an example: PIM through Gmail and Calendar, productivity in docs and spreadsheets. Use the Gmail contacts as the telephone contact book as well as for email. Have Google Reader there to aggregate the feeds. Hell, why not go the whole hog and put calls through VOIP?

    This way, there is no need for synchronisation, because when you log into your services from a PC, it’s exactly how you left it through your phone, because it’s effectively the same interface, just a different device that’s using it.

  3. Karl Long

    It sure does rock, it runs great on my N80. Also, the google maps for mobile is amazing as well, i’ve been using it to get around san francisco and it is very well done. The good thing about these apps is that they are so freaking fast, almost everything else browser based runs so slow.

    I actually think apps like these are going to help us get around the walled gardens that carriers/mobile operators are trying to maintain, a related post: Are Mobile Operators stifling Mobile Innovation?

    cheers!

    Karl

    (oh and you know I work for Nokia so I will shamelessly pimp those phones :-)

  6. Lee

    I’ve tried this a few times. While I like the fact it uses the same functions as the original the font size is causing me eyestrain.

  7. pam

    I just signed up for it so I haven’t used it yet. I have a Nokia 6010 and I probably will not be purchasing any more Noika phones. I love smart phones (I have a Kyrocera that I can’t use – Alltel canceled using them) and will have one in the future. Until then I’ll probably be using gmail on the computer. :(

  8. neville

    Some great tips here, thanks.

    Google Maps looks good, Karl, and it will run on my phone. But US and Canada maps only so just of passing interest to me at the moment.

    Having to log in each time is a pain, Stephen. But don’t you use the ‘remember me’ option? I do, and it works perfectly – when I go to Gmail, it just drops me straight in to my inbox.

    Goosync looks interesting, Dave. I don’t use Google Calendar myself (I use Outlook which syncs perfectly with my phone calendar) but I can see its value.

    Lee, you should have a menu option in your phone to increase and decrease font sizes when you’re using your web browser.

  10. neville

    That’s interesting, Philippe, that you get maps for Belgium. I’m only offered maps for the US and Canada when I go to Google Maps on my phone, an N73.

    I wonder why that is?

  12. HuLsH

    I had a problem with my V800 I got a “certificate not valid” error. Finally I solved the problem and enjoyed in yet another excellent app from Google. The only problem is that you can use it only for checking GMail account. With another program that I use http://movamail.com/ I watch my other accounts. I will try to think of a reason why should I use Gmail mobile. When I can do all off that on my old app Movamail

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