Over a year ago, Google released a mobile version of Gmail accessed through your phone’s web browser.  It was nice compared to other mobile applications and pretty easy to use.  Today, they have released a downloadable Java applet for your phone that is suppose to make the experience even better.  Instead of using your phones internal web browser, you actually install the Gmail application directly to your phone.  When you want to check you email account, simply fire up the application.

Downloading was simple.  Open your mobile web browser and point it to http://www.gmail.com/app.  Installation was painless and, with one click, the application started right up (granted I have a Windows Smartphone so your experience may differ).  The first screen prompts you for your username and password.  This can be a little tricky depending on your password and whether your phone has a keyboard or not (triple tapping a mixed case alpha-numeric password is not fun).

This is where things slowed down.  I was presented with the main screen and a loading icon in the upper right of the screen.  My mail never loaded.  I exited the application and re-opened it.  This time I received the message, "Connecting to service, please wait…"  I gave up after ten minutes of not connecting.  I’ll let you know if I ever connect.

tags: Gmail, Google, Mobile

UPDATE: I did get it to work today.  As Robert points out in his comment, the text is almost too small to read on my phone (which has a pretty good resolution).  I found that you could go into the settings and turn the Small Text option off.  Now I am rocking and rolling.  The experience is much better than that of WAP version.

This entry was posted by Josh Kenzer on Thursday, November 2nd, 2006 at 8:47 am and is filed under Geeky Stuff, Mobile. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.