Gmail Goes Mobile… Again

I was just reading through my RSS feeds and playing around with my new phone when I read one about Gmail 2 for mobile being released. I watched the video (which is embedded below) and wondered if the application was only available for smart phones as it mentions the Nokia N95 in this blog post. To my surprise it works on J2ME-supported phones. So basically every new phone for the past 2 years, and seeing as how mine is brand spanking new I thought I would see what it was like.

To get the application go to m.google.com/mail on your mobile web browser and click the link to install, save it to your applications folder and then run it. Its about 65kb so shouldn’t cost you anything if you don’t have additional data bundles with your network operator as typically they offer 1MB/month free.

The application works fantastically with a smooth scrolling action no dounbt designed with touch screen devices in mind. It manages to pack in most of the Gmail features you find on their main website including the option to manage multiple accounts, just Gmail ones though.

It even allows you to view attachments, I tested it with a .pdf from a recent email and it showed me all the content, even though it was just in text form this is pretty useful. I don’t know what other filetypes are supported or how images will be displayed.

The other cool thing is that it allows you to compose messages offline and then send them all at once. So you don’t have to be constantly connected to the internet to use all of the application. It is self contained ofline and only connects when it is necessary.