Previously the only way to access Gmail on your phone was if you had a POP3 client on your phone, and by following these instructions. Although this method allows you to access your emails, it doesn’t allow you to utilise the full tagging and search capabilities of Gmail and it also doesn’t sync with your web-based account so emails will stay unread even if you read them on your phone.
There is now a simpler way to access Gmail on your phone which doesn’t seem to be promoted anywhere yet by Google, which provides all of the useful features we’ve come to love from Google as well as some new ones.
To access the new service all you have to do is enter m.gmail.com into your phone browser. The service is a stripped down version of Gmail which loads ultra-fast and it also detects what type of device you are using to optimise what is displayed.
Some of the cool features include:
- Gmail mobile syncs with your computer-based account, so messages read on your phone will be marked as read the next time you log on at your PC
- Attachments can be viewed including PDFs and Office files
One very nice feature is a “call to reply” which allows you to call the sender of an email automatically if you’ve saved their number in your contacts file. This feature can be handy if you are all fingers and thumbs and don’t want to spend 5 minutes struggling to type two sentences into a phone that can be covered in a 20 second phone call.
Update: Here’s the Official Google Page
