Comments on: Google Shows Offline GMail Proof-of-Concept for iPhone

By: Walt

Walt — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 02:14:07 +0000

I moved to the iPhone from the Palm Pre.... Push gmail on the Pre was sweet. You would make a purchase at Amazon and literally 2 seconds later your phone would chime with the receipt. Sure you don't check it all the time, but you can always turn the notification off or to something subtle if that's your thing. Google really needs to get this going.

By: Symbian Blogger

Symbian Blogger — Sat, 16 May 2009 20:37:04 +0000

I found your blog on google and read a few of your other posts. I just added you to my Google News Reader. Keep up the good work. Look forward to reading more from you in the future.

By: d

Fri, 20 Feb 2009 09:31:52 +0000

@Wesley notificate?! Really? Well bravo for your 6th grade English teacher. Good point anyway. Too bad the us patent system doesn't always help the progress of good technology. Once we overcome that barrier I will notify you.

By: Al

Al — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 00:31:53 +0000

Push gmail would be cool I guess, but who really needs their email more often than every 15 minutes? I get email for work all the time but seriously, do you need it instantly? Isn't someone going to call or text you if they need you that badly?

By: icebike

icebike — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 21:37:35 +0000

@Wesley: "For push to work, it should be bundled with GSM/UMTS, so the tower would notificate us just like it does with text messages."

Don't hold your breath on that. Blackberry has that patented and locked up tight in their MobiText/Datatak network (which they pay carriers to co-locate at most cell sites).

The GSM standard is unable to include this even if they did a standards revision because of these patents as well as those held by NTP on the concept of un-solicited notification of mail arrival.

Further, the arrival of G4 or G5 won't necessarily help, because even if they added mail arrival signaling to the standards, NTP will claim it is an unsolicited email notification.

Active Sync side steps this issue by having the hand held solicit an e-mail check which the server sort of forgets to answer right away. (nudge nudge, wink wink).

I just don't see Apple paying the royalties that NTP wants nor maintaining the infrastructure that RIM has.

By: icebike

icebike — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 21:10:48 +0000

@Tyler

Offline Gmail is for when you are, well, Off line.

When you are Off Line, a notifier does you no good, because, as you might expect, you are off line.

Notifier and offline are two different things, solving different problems, and lack of one does not make the other useless.

So saying offline gmail is useless because it doesn't notify you is sort of a non sequitur.

I get that you want gmail push. So do I.

But that won't do you any good in an airplane.

By: Wesley

Wesley — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 18:28:27 +0000

@M. Elwan: I'm using Google Sync with fetch now.

I tried more than removing the account, I've restored my iPhone (I had it running with upgrades since 2.0, so I thought it was a good idea to do a clean start), and still that was happening.

That plus the phone using EDGE almost every minute when on standby (something that makes me mad since I have WiFi always available).

At the moment I disabled push, everything was back to normal.

By: M. Elwan

M. Elwan — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 18:24:37 +0000

@Wesley: I use Google Sync as well and my battery lasts almost 24 hours. Try removing the sync account and re-configure it. See if that helps.

By: Wesley

Wesley — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 18:13:37 +0000

Push on iPhone destroys the battery life. I don't know if it's directly related to Microsoft ActiveSync, but when I enabled push for Google Sync, my iPhone, when standby, behaved like some 3D game was running, consuming the battery in a matter of hours...

For push to work, it should be bundled with GSM/UMTS, so the tower would notificate us just like it does with text messages.

By: Amon

Amon — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 14:17:12 +0000

Good idea but with safari refreshing each i start it not sure if the offline thingy works 100%. I will work with the mail app for now, works fine for me.

By: SHollomon

SHollomon — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 14:12:36 +0000

Ditto on the need for a new mail notifier. Offline access is great, but without a notifier it fails. I don't have much problem using gmail on with iPhone mail, but would prefer an email client that was more gmail friendly (lets me star and label mail easily etc.)

What would be great is if google built a front end based on licensing, that made their mail service look like an exchange server. Then outlook would work as a client on the desktop (outlook imap is so bad as to make the application unusable for me with gmail). This should improve the experience on iphone as well.

Still, apple needs to implement things like landscape editing and multiple mail signatures.

By: Tyler

Tyler — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 13:22:06 +0000

Offline gmail in a browser is all well and good, but unfortunately it is pretty useless if I don't have a new mail notifier to tell me to go look for new mail.

By: Sting7k

Sting7k — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 12:54:49 +0000

Hmm, interesting but push Gmail setup with their new exchange would be pretty sweet. And would show that Google is still good and not as evil yet.

I'm just wondering though, I hear about the strange things Gmail does setup as imap on the iPhone but I never have any problems. Gmail is by far the fastest email on my phone. I have AOL and Gmail setup. With both all I did was enter my user name and password into the iPhone's mail app, which I assume is imap because both behave as imap. Gmail works a lot better than AOL and has never not worked.