Trumblog

Gmail is hands down the most useful 3rd party BlackBerry application that I use.  Others may have a better user experience, there may be ones that look better, some are certainly more fun or cool.  But Gmail is by far the application that I use the most and has the set of features that I appreciate the most across all of the third party apps on my BlackBerry.

I’m assuming that you already know what Gmail is, but just in case, Gmail is Google’s free email product.  You’ll need to sign up for it, but you don’t have to worry about invitations like you once did and now have to for some newer Google applications like Google Wave and Google Voice.

Gmail gives you the same screens on the BlackBerry that you have in a standard email program; Inbox, Outbox, Mobile Drafts, Trash, Spam and Contacts.  They all function as you’d expect so I won’t bother going into detail except for with the Contacts screen.  Here you can browse or search for  contacts and then email them, search for recent emails from a specific contact and event call them.  There are also some additional views and ways to sort your email.  For example there is a Chats screen, these are email and GTalk conversations and though GTalk isn’t part of the Gmail application, those conversations are accessible from the BlackBerry app.

Messages are sortable so you can find starred messages (stars are a way to flag important emails) or by label (a tag that can be applied to a message making them easy to group).  Finally you can also review messages that have been automatically marked as spam and placed in the Spam folder.

Of course you can compose new emails, reply to and forward emails, you can star emails, mark them as spam, delete them, archive them, etc. The application has spell check too.  Search is excellent, just as you’d expect from a Google product.

And Gmail even takes it up a notch. Unlike most BlackBerry applications that have limited functionality when offline, Gmail caches received emails for reading offline and then synchronizes when it has a signal again, just like the BlackBerry native Messages app.  With that Gmail sets the bar for other Google mobile apps and I would love to see a Google Reader and Google News application that works similarly for use on my subway ride to work.

Of course Gmail does have some weak spots, which I point out solely in the hope that the application can be made even better.  Received messages cannot be labeled, which means that while you can clear your Inbox, you can’t really organize it.  You also can’t edit contact information a benefit that would be a handy addition.

There really is not much to say about the functionality of the application because it has all of the features that you expect from an email app.  And what higher praise can you give a mobile application.  The Gmail app does everything that the online version does, but in a smaller, mobile package.

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