San Francisco — Many people rely on Gmail for their day in and day out communications. And as those of you who have been anxiously looking forward to the arrival of Google’s official Gmail push solution for mobile phones can relax now. Google Inc., on Tuesday added Gmail support to Google Sync for the iPhone, iPod touch, and Windows Mobile devices. The move helps Google play catch-up in its ongoing race for the enterprise.
Google Sync, which started as a beta service in February, to sync Google Calendar and Google Contacts, information over-the-air, enables you to sync to your iPhone, Windows Mobile, and Symbian Series 60 phones using the iPhone’s built-in apps. Owners of iPhones, iPod Touches, and Windows Mobile phones can now set it up to include Gmail messages as well.
Now they can sync their Gmail messages as well, said Douglas Gresham, a software engineer for Google Mobile, in a blog post.
“Having an over-the-air, always-on connection means that your inbox is up to date, no matter where you are or what you are doing,” Gresham wrote. “Sync works with your phone’s native e-mail application so there is no additional software needed.”
Up until now, users have had to make setting on their iPhones to “pull” email from Gmail’s servers instead. The most frequently Gmail can be retrieved automatically is once every 15 minutes, though users can choose to manually refresh any time they open their mail accounts.
To get started, visit m.google.com/sync from your desktop or mobile browser. The step-by-step setup process is best navigated from your computer, and will require you to ultimately configure your phone to sync over the Microsoft Exchange Server. Those who already have Sync can just enable push mail. Those with the iPhone will need iPhone OS version 3.0 or above.
“Once you are through with the set up, new messages would normally be pushed to your phone within seconds,” Marcus Foster, a product manager for Google Mobile wrote, but he warned about the potential stress on battery life.
“While this type of speed is pretty awesome, push connections tend to use more power than fetching at intervals, so do not be surprised if your battery life is not quite what it used to be,” he said. “We have done a lot of work to optimize power usage, but if you prefer to save battery life, you can always turn off push in your phone’s settings and fetch mail every 30 or 60 minutes instead.”
Ezra Gottheil, an analyst at Technology Business Research Inc., said giving Gmail a mobile push is an important step for Google, which has been trying to draw more business from the enterprise.
“Instant awareness is something some people care about a great deal,” he added. “For some people, being informed as soon as e-mail arrives is important. That, along with the keyboard, was the driving force behind the Blackberry . If you are doing a lot of business via e-mail, you can reduce the time to transact business by reducing wait times.”
“To win, Gmail has to be better, not just just as good,” he said. “It is just that this mobile push is not so much a feature as the removal of a drawback.”