Posted by Varun Aggarwal
Gmail app for mobile phones has been there for a while and to be honest, it was pretty useful too. But as they say, all good things come to an end! Trying to offer more features in its Gmail mobile app, Google started offering push e-mail. The new service offers offline e-mail access but only to a limited number of mails-irrespective of how many mails you retrieved from the server. It still does not allow to send attachments and enables downloading only a few types of files from the e-mails to the phone. E-mail alert is offered but only a vibration alert–no sound! I guess Google doesn’t like to make too much of noise these days.
So that was about some new, ‘cool’ features from Google’s stable. Now let’s talk about performance. Well, the app runs extremely slowly even on a powerful device like my Nokia E71. If you try to multi-task with it, ther are chances you won’t be able to do anything at all and would have to reboot your phone. Now, the biggest problem that I find with this app is that if you’re running it on a synchronize mode, it doesn’t let you stay away from your mails at all. So much so that, even when you’re on a call (when grps is suspended for the call duration), this app keeps pushing connectivity alerts on your face to ensure that e-mails are not delayed. For god sake, why couldn’t Google developers figure out that you can’t run Internet or mails while you’re on a call!!
This alert is tolerable when you’re only talking on the phone. If you try to, for example, record your call or try to receive another call waiting, it’ll keep asking you to choose a connection for e-mail unless the connection selected is able to connect to the server (which is not possible cos the operator wont allow you to access the Internet server while on a call). The annoying alert would not let you take a second call or run any applications like a recorder in case you made the mistake of choosing the ‘push’ e-mail feature of the app. Now, I’m just waiting for an update to see if Google rectifies this error, or else I’ll just have to stick to other push mail apps.
January 20th, 2009 at 7:32 am
Er…well, it definitely behaves immaculately on my phone (Nokia N95 8GB). Yes, the absence of a sound alert is a bit annoying, but that apart it does not ask for connections in the middle of my calls…yet. I am sticking with it.
January 20th, 2009 at 7:33 am
I don’t think it allows any sort of downloads at all - it only opens some of the attachments and that too if you are opening a PDF file, you are going to be finding the formatting gone for a six!