Tuesday, November 07, 2006 Limpag: GMail in your mobile phone By Max Limpag Celltalk
GREAT APPLICATION. Forget configuring your phone to accept POP 3 or IMAP e-mail; pretty soon you can access your account with what is probably the world’s best free e-mail service just by installing an application in your phone.
Google announced last week the availability of Gmail for mobile application, a Java program that brings the world’s top e-mail service to your phone.
You can already access your Gmail account via a website specially formatted for mobile phones at m.gmail.com. What the application, launched last week, does is to make access even easier and faster, according to Gmail.
If you use WAP browsing, you have to manually enter the web address and make sure to bookmark it or that it gets saved in your browsing history because entering web addresses is such a pain when you use alphanumeric keys.
With the Gmail for mobile application, you just start the program and then enter your username and password once, and then it will connect to your account. By default, your username and password are saved and you are always signed in when you open the program. You have, however, the option to turn this off.
The Gmail team said that the application offers, “Speed. Serious speed,” and “The same Gmail functions you know and love, like search and Conversation View,” with the look and feel of Gmail.
LIMITED? Gmail for mobile application offers a lot of cool options. But don’t stop reading this column just yet. To download the application, the Gmail team said, “We’re currently only able to support users in the United States. However, Gmail users in any country are able to download and use the Gmail for mobile application on their compatible mobile phones.”
I’ve been able to install the application quickly and without a hitch (see photo) but I haven’t been able to connect to my inbox or send an email using the application in my K750i, which is using a Smart Buddy connection.
I do not know if the issue is with the Gmail server or the certificates in my phone or the connection with Smart.
I’ve tried for hours trying to connect to my inbox, to no avail. I can connect using the m.gmail.com address but for the life of me I can’t seem to get the application to load my inbox. When I tried sending an email, I got a 502 error or service unavailable. I gave up when it came my time to send this column.
Have you tried the service? Were you able to access your Gmail account? If so, tell me how you did it by posting a comment in my blog at http://max.limpag.com. I will be spending the next few days trying to make this work in my phone. (Note: I finally got it to work. I'll write about how I did it next week.)
