Google’s Gmail goes Mobile

December 15th, 2005 · No Comments

Google’s Gmail is now mobile enabled. Users can now access the service through (almost) any web-enabled mobile phone through a variety of mobile browsers. Most of the service’s key features are available and have been optimized for the smaller format of mobile phone screens.

From Gmail Mobile’s news release:

Now you can access your Gmail account from your mobile phone or device. Just point your phone’s web browser to http://m.gmail.com. Your Gmail account stays synched, whether you access it from the web or the mobile interface. It’s easy to use and it’s free (but yes, your wireless plan could still charge you).

It also has these cool features:

• Automatically optimizes the interface for the phone you’re using

• Opens the attachments you receive in messages, including photos, Microsoft Word documents and .pdf files

• Lets you reply by call to people whose phone numbers are in your Gmail Contacts list

Optimization is interesting since the service automatically formats your mail according to the parameters of your mobile phone screen. Given the prevalence of pop3 and imap clients in modern mobile phones it remains to be seen how much impact a browser based service will have in the market. However, many mobile clients do not support SSL (which Gmail requires) which may explain Gmail Mobiles browser based emphasis.

Gmail also released two additional new features, a vacation auto-reponsder, and contact groups.