I recently wrote about my experiences moving from BIS on a Bold 9700 to pure GPRS / 3G and how I managed to use AstraSync to keep my push emails coming in via MS Exchange, but a post on 247 caused me to try something different. The Google Mail app is available on a variety of platforms now and so I tested it on my Bold to see what it is like, in short it is basic, but highly use-able and has many advantages over some rival offerings. For a start it offers audible, LED and onscreen icon notifications of new emails and this is a must have to many BlackBerry users such as myself. It is free and the main Google app opens up access to other services from the big ‘G’ in a clean and easy to navigate environment.
With the standard BlackBerry BIS offering what I would call a limited service and a basic mail interface you will not lose a great deal by switching to an alternative in my view. The Google Mail app offers everything I need for quick emailing during the day, but there are some strange omissions which need to be fixed at some stage- no attachment support is one and it feels far too much like the standard BlackBerry mail interface for my liking. However, I’m not complaining too much because it does the job. Ironically I have to set up a separate forward from my MS Exchange to use the Google Mail app and that is making me consider moving away from MS Exchange altogether.
What I did next was something that the rest of the world did a long time ago- I had a look around to see what Google has to offer and the results surprised me. Google Docs, Reader and many of the other offerings are remarkably clean and simple to use and I can see myself using them more and more as time progresses. The trick will be for Google to integrate all of these offerings seamlessly with a smartphone which is capable of using them effectively. Android is obviously getting there and the potential is huge, but when a truly great smartphone comes out with a full keyboard the combination could be hard to resist. I can see myself moving to Android at some stage in the future when the right phone is released, and despite my loathing for using one company for everything, the idea appeals a great deal.
