I’m a huge fan of email. It can collected, collated, archived, sorted, searched, forwarded and best of all without a literal paper trail. When smartphones entered the market, I was eager to have one, but didn’t feel important enough for 24/7 portable email access. After I changed jobs and started using the iPhone Mail app that syncs through an Outlook Exchange server at work (and thus no Google Sync possible), though, I realize how electronically tethered I was and how I would never be the same. So I yearned for my personal email to have the same importance.

I chose Google’s gmail a few years ago as my primary personal free-mail service and have enjoyed the ongoing integration and services. And after its review here, I chose Boxcar when it offered 1 free push notification (version 2.0) to give me that teaser of “you’ve got mail,” and then I used the native iPhone Mail app to collect and read email since I didn’t care for Boxcar’s email viewer. For a few months now, I’ve been happy using that arrangement, but when I couldn’t keep up with replies and responses from multiple sources to a single email (read in between the lines if you’re not on staff here ), I appreciated the power that Google’s gmail had in keeping conversations threaded. This meant I went to using Safari to open mobile gmail – a powerful and improving way to access email.

Yet, I wanted an app devoted to my personal email (maybe I am icon happy?) so I searched the App Store looking for a gmail app with the specific criteria of (a) having push notification so I might free up Boxcar for a different single service; and (b) being able to display threaded conversations. Despite reviews of PushGmail, and once-positive review of iGmail, I opted for Gmail Push in part because of an added feature I think should be available on every app that allows notifications – Quiet Hours. Quiet Hours is similar to setting a programmable thermostat: I can select the day(s) and hours which will automatically silence the notification! Before this, my evening routine included a visit to the settings menu to silence the “New Mail” sound for the iPhone Mail app and Boxcar’s notification (although it helps to read the blog you work for). I’ve now eliminated one of those steps, and as Ron Popeil would say, “I just set it and forget it!”

When considering my first criteria of push, the badge alert is similar to Boxcar’s. A choice of sounds (or none) from a “belch” to a “whistle”  can be selected from its un-alphabetized list to accompany the badge that displays a notice, a sender, and subject line (no first lines of text). If you are not on the locked home screen, you are prompted with a choice to either Cancel or View the email. If you are actually reading gmail using Gmail Push, a New Mail notice appears with the same prompte. Unfortunately, Gmail Push does not take you directly to the message, however; it takes you to mobile gmail itself.

Despite a larger screen for viewing than Safari, Gmail Push is basically a browser devoted to Gmail (based on iLegendSoft’s awesome and soon-to-be reviewed Mercury Browser). That means thanks to mobile gmail, the font is too small, which makes the links and double-tapping challenging; there’s no finger-pinch zoom; and unlike Safari, it doesn’t rotate to landscape (to be corrected in a future update). Therefore it satisfies my requirement of threaded messages.

I can also navigate through other links and use other Google services through Google’s menu on Gmail (Reader, Calendar, etc.), but there’s no “back” button: so to return to gmail, you have to press the “i”nformation button in the upper right to access the Settings menu and then return “Back” to the viewing screen.

Am I totally sold on Gmail Push? Not completely, but close. Future updates, according to the developer, also will include full screen mode, and customized notification content (where “users can select sender, subject, first part of mail body or none of them for privacy reasons”). At the time of this writing, Gmail Push is on sale at the App Store for $0.99 and worth consideration if you’re a heavy gmail user.

Gmail Push was bought at author ‘s expense for review on Just Another iPhone Blog. For further information regarding our site ‘s review policies, please see the ‘About ‘ page.

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