SlashPhone » Gmail Mobile

Gmail for iPhone and Android Now Support Labelling

Kim Poh Liaw — Wed, 20 May 2009 09:34:20 +0000

Thanks to the major revision in April, Google Gmail team can now develop and release new features in a shorter time frame. The team is introducing the Iterative Webapp, a series of new features that the team will announce when ready. Gmail for Android and iPhone is added with the “Label” feature, allow you to tag the emails with different colors. The new feature is only available in US English language only for now.

Gmail Mobile for iPhone and Android Gets Mute Feature

Kim Poh Liaw — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 07:20:26 +0000

With the new Gmail mobile for iPhone and Android released early this month, Google is adding in more features for the Gmail mobile. A feature called “mute”, which allows you mute a conversation and keep the additional follow up emails for that conversation out of your inbox. ”Mute” was already available on the web version, it is now available on Gmail mobile for iPhone and Android smartphone.

More about “Mute” messages

Muted messages are not marked as read, are still searchable, and can specifically be found by searching for: is:muted

Filters will still be applied to muted messages. To un-mute a conversation, select the conversation and click Move to inbox. Doing so will move the entire conversation to your inbox and will remove the mute action, so that future messages are also delivered to your inbox.

Google Updates Gmail Mobile for iPhone and Android

Kim Poh Liaw — Wed, 08 Apr 2009 05:36:27 +0000

Specifically renewed for iPhone and Android devices, Google has announced that its Gmail Mobile is revamped with a major revision. The Gmail web client has got a new interface, faster to open an email, support basic offline storage and allow batch actions on your emails. Using the iPhone’s internal database and Android’s mobile Gears support, your emails are cached inside your device internally. Furthermore, actions like archiving or starring messages will be applied to the cached copies so that you can get an instant response. Gmail mobile will then send the changes to Gmail servers in the background.

You can now access the new version at gmail.com, it is available in English only for now and compatible with Android or iPhone OS 2.2.1.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Despite the advent of 3G networks and wifi, smartphones still lack a high-speed, always-on broadband connection and can have connections far less reliable than their desktop brethren. So, just like when we redesigned the Gmail for mobile client app last October, we’ve gone back to the drawing board and redesigned Gmail for the mobile browser to overcome some of these limitations. We made performance more consistent, regardless of connection type, and laid the foundation for future improvements.

Now, when you go to gmail.com from your iPhone or Android browser, archiving email is quicker because it doesn’t require a response from a remote server. Instead, we cache mail on the device itself (using database storage on the iPhone and a device-local mobile Gears database on Android-powered phones). Actions like archiving or starring messages are first applied to this cache and then sent to Gmail servers in the background whenever a network connection is available. You only have to wait for a response from the server when you’re requesting an uncached message or list of messages. As a result, you can start-up Gmail even if you’re on a slow connection. You can even compose mail and open recently read messages while offline.

We made extensive use of other browser functions too: for example, the floaty bar that lets you archive, delete or apply more actions is animated via CSS transformations and controlled in part with touch events (when you scroll the screen, it follows you).

The HTML5 canvas tag is used to render the progress spinner without the overhead of downloading animated GIFs to the device. Now that we’ve developed a framework for the new Gmail for mobile, we’re planning a whole lot more: faster performance, improved offline operation, new functionality, and interface enhancements that take advantage of the unique properties of smartphones.