All Articles Tagged gmail

The Reviews of the Android G1 Phone on T-Mobile are out and the verdicts are generally as follows: Partly Cloudy¹, but forecasting big things to come. We’re not going to try to hit every point just yet, but there’s one point where this “Sidekick for Grownups” has what appears to be a real advantage over everybody else: dead-simple cloud setup.

So compared to the iPhone, just how good is the setup on the G1? The answer is: Depends on whether or not you’re a Gmail type of person.

Yeah, “depends” isn’t exactly a clear answer, so follow us after the break for a bit more on whether the G1 is PIM Push Paradise compared to MobileMe’s Mechanized Movement of information.

(¹Sorry, could help myself with that pun)

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More Blackberry Bold coverage? What are we, ? Fair point. But come on, RIM’s latest/greatest did just launch in North America yesterday, so it’s only polite that we pay it some attention. How does RIM repay us, however? It’s not enough they iClone our glossy black and silver edged form factor, now they’ve got to iClone our 3G network connectivity issues as well?

I mean, we’ve gone on, and on, and on (or should it be off?) about the reports of the iPhone suffering from a string of perplexing 3G connection problems. Blame has been laid with the carriers and their networks, with chip manufacturer Infineon and their hardware and drivers, and with Apple and their 2.0h-no firmware. But thus far, while 2.0.2 supposedly addresses some issues for some users, no widespread solution has yet appeared.

However, reports are also now surfacing of the brand spanking new BlackBerry Bold suffering from very similar sounding problems. Says Electronista:

[Citigroup investment analyst Jim Suva] also notes that the BlackBerry suffers from the same problems of the iPhone, including 3G connection problems; the device will frequently drop 3G in favor of a slower, 2G EDGE link when downtown. Suva speculates that the flaw may likewise stem from rough software and that AT&T may have delayed its launch primarily to stabilize 3G performance.

Of course, our friends over at Crackberry HQ would likely point out that, as usual, truck-sized grain of salt should ship standard with every analyst report, and that AT&T due to the size and perhaps complexity of their network, does a whole heaping lot of testing.

But misery — and lack of connectivity — does love company, doesn’t it?

For my part, other than Gmail on the iPhone continuing to make my life miserable, 3G is a little slow in connecting at first, but then seems to be working fine.

(Thanks Bad Ash for the tip!)

Ed Baig over at USA Today (via Daring Fireball) is reporting that:

Apple (AAPL) acknowledged Tuesday that a software update for the iPhone partly fixes the connection snags that have caused a global firestorm for the new iPhone 3G. Though mum on details, Apple spokeswoman Jennifer Bowcock said on Tuesday, “The software update improves communication with 3G networks.”

Really?

As I mentioned previously, yesterday in Downtown Montreal, it looked like I was unable to connect to the 3G network at all. Last night in the suburbs of Montreal, however, I was able to connect (though it took a while). Today, downtown again… nadda. Or so I thought. I switched back to WiFi and still couldn’t connect… to Gmail.

Yup. While I’d tested Gmail, MobileMe, ActiveSync, and MobileSafari yesterday, sometime since then I’d made the mistake of just hitting Gmail in MobileMail.app to see if a connection would pop up. Turns out that was really shoddy testing on my part. See, Gmail on iPhone says I haven’t had any messages since 6pm last night. Gmail on the desktop however, while continuously giving me “Server error: too many simultaneous connections (Failure)”, shows 50+ more, right up to this very minute. Now, I’ve Twittered nearly constantly about problems with Gmail IMAP lately, from invalid certificate errors, to server connection problems, to the mail outage they had a week or so back (not coincidentally the same time MobileMe was out… again).

So what’s going on? Are their network connection problems or is Gmail IMAP that really buggy (according to Twitter again, it’s buggy enough to make some iPhone developers abandon it entirely)? And has this been adding to, or merely confusing my 3G network connection problems?

My guess is the former. Intermittent 3G network connection errors, and Gmail IMAP still really isn’t ready for prime time. (And why that doesn’t get the blog-focus MobileMe gets, aside from the admittedly free nature of the beast, is a bit perplexing).

I plan to run more (and better) tests today, and hopefully get something of a less obscure picture.

Sorry PC Users. And non-iPhone users. And we’re not sorry for you having to think about an upgrade to Vista or Windows Mobile 6.1 either. No, we’re sorry because Google loves us iPhone users more than you. Google has an iPhone Fixation. The newest evidence? The latest and greatest update to the Mac OS, 10.5.3, just came out today and it has a new feature: syncing of contacts with Google. Gmail already works better with the iPhone than it does with any other mail app, now it works better with the iPhone when plugged into a Mac, too.

Odd that it would only work if you have an iPhone, though, innit? If you’re not “one of us” (Google! Goggle!), you can still sync your contacts up with Yahoo, who still is also the only way to get Push email pre-iPhone-2.0.

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Update: Ars Technica chimes in with a hack for your forlorn non-iPhone-owning Mac Users. For my part, I very much want to apply 10.5.3 but I have a policy of waiting at least a week before installing it. Crazy? …Or crazy like a fox?

Can’t wait till iPhone firmware 2.0 to get your corporate calendar on your iPhone? Here is a great trick to get your enterprise appointments onto you’re your iPhone.

What you will need:

• Novell GroupWise (tested, though should work with other mail applications)
• A Google Account with:
• Gmail
• Google Calendar

For the bonuses, you will need:

• A calendar that can subscribe to .ics files (iCal) I found the basics of this idea here, but have elaborated it to iCal which works great for me.

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One of the most interesting stories at Macworld hasn’t gotten a lot of attention in the larger press - namely that Google was around at Macworld a lot more than most people realize. It’s not just that they have a medium-sized booth featuring both their Mac products and new iPhone-compatible web offerings. No, the real story about Google at Macworld is that it’s very clear that Google has the iPhone on their collective mind in a big, big way.

Google’s services will continue to be great on the iPhone even after their Android OS hits the market. Read on to find out why!

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