Full FeedAppletell reviews PushGmail for iPhone, iPod Touch
Provides: Push e-mail via Gmail
Developer: Gary Fung
Compatibility: iPhone and iPod touch
Minimum Requirements: iPhone OS 3.0+
Price: $0.99
Availability: Now
Version Reviewed: 1.0
Size: 0.2 MB
Many people have been waiting for decent Gmail Push Notifications to come to the iPhone. There are quite a few of these applications in the App Store that try to solve this issue, and there is now also a way to get Gmail emails through Push using Google Sync and the iPhone OS 3.0’s Microsoft Exchange support. As you can see, the average customer certainly isn’t short of their ways to get their Gmail email pushing to them instantly. PushGmail is just one of these applications (and the cheapest that I can find) that aims to solve this issue.
When you first launch the application, you are greeted with two tabs. The first is the log-in screen in the image below. As you can see, all the user must do is enter their Gmail address and then activate Push services with it. Then they simply decide how to manage the viewing of that email via the switch on the bottom. If you choose to have it open Mail.app, you will notice that instead of actually opening the email, it simply opens a blank email. According to the developer, this is because Apple’s SDK doesn’t allow developers to go straight to emails through Mail.app
The other tab on this application simply loads your Gmail account via a web view and Safari in case you like that interface more than the built-in one for iPhone. Unfortunately, this application doesn’t have support for multiple accounts. However, if you only have two Gmail addresses, you could use this application for one and the previously mentioned method for the other.
When you get a message and are using your phone, the notification is almost instantaneous, which is interesting to watch. The notification will show you the title of the email as well as the first couple words or so, and you can choose to view or ignore it as usual. That said, my experiences with this application are mixed. While sometimes the message is almost instant, other times it would seem to take a little longer or just miss some altogether. The developer does mention that sometimes, if your iPhone is sleeping, it can take longer due to the way the iPhone manages wifi to save battery during sleep. Perhaps it is due to these, or perhaps sometimes something messes up on the applications end.
Overall, I would recommend spending the small price of $0.99 if you want a quick and simple way to get Push Notifications for Gmail messages to your iPhone. While it isn’t developed by Google themselves, it works fine for the one account you can use with it.
Appletell Rating:
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I added my Gmail account to the standard mail app that the iPhone comes with and set the setting to “fetch”. Doesn’t that work the same?
on September 28, 2009 at 08:34 AM - LINKFetch will certainly draw a lot more battery from your device as it constantly checks the feed to see if their are new items. With Push, your phone doesn’t have to do anything until some code on the server side of the application sends a message, almost like a text, to your device.
on September 28, 2009 at 05:36 PM - LINKoh, okay I get it. Thanks for the explanation! I was a little confused as to why this was a big deal. I read about it on a couple other blogs.
on September 29, 2009 at 07:23 AM - LINKI’m not really sure why you only gave this a 3/5, this is a great app that does exactly what it advertises. Great review, though.
on October 27, 2009 at 04:35 AM - LINK