Well, what do you know. The very same day that a cool new push notification app for Gmail comes out, Google themselves roll out their own Push solution through Google Sync. Which one to choose?! I’ve been playing with the app for around three days now and have been quite pleased with the performance. Sure, the app could still use a little more work (especially with the volume of the alerts), but I have really gotten addicted to the pop-up push notifications!
More details after the jump!
Setting up Push
Load the app, enter your Gmail credentials in the settings tab, and activate the feature. That’s it! The only other decision you need to make at this point is whether or not you’d like to load up the default Mail client or use GmailPush’s built-in browser to load up the Gmail web client. There’s only one account to sign up with for now, but future versions will allow for several accounts as well as filters for e-mails that you don’t want push alerts for.
Launching to Gmail Web
Once you receive an alert, tapping on view will take you right to the PushGmail app where the webpage will have to load anew (it won’t take you right to the message). I really wish it could cache better, as loading takes at least five seconds every time. The Gmail client is much faster than Mail once it is fully loaded, but I like this app more for mail management than for actually writing responses. It’s much easier to archive and read conversations, but it’s more difficult to write since the web app doesn’t have any good way of scrolling through long emails.
Launching to the Mail app
If you choose to use the default mail app, the alerts will take you write to a a “compose new email” screen, which is a little strange. As it turns out (and as Robin pointed out in the comments of the launch post), this is a limitation of the SDK. The only way that developers can link to the Mail app is to bring you to the “compose new email” screen. Ridiculous! At least the inbox is only ever one tap of “cancel” away.
Push alerts (with a lil “vs. Google Sync” action”)
Patrick reported the other day that he thought that Google Sync’s push felt slow – but I think it was just because the service had just launched. Overall, I’d say the two services are pretty near equal in speed: sometimes GSync is faster, but other times PushGmail wins.
However, the killer features of this app don’t lie in the speed, but in the alerts. The PushGmail icon features its own badges for unread e-mails (refreshed every time you launch the app), so you could actually use only the Gmail web app and throw the Mail icon away to the 10th home screen – never to be seen or heard from again! However, should you want to do use the app purely for its push notification pop-ups as I do now, you’ll still be pleased as punch. The pop-ups show the sender, subject, and a sample of the body text. All very cool – and it’s honestly a feature the iPhone should have by default.
My only major complaint about the app is the volume of the alert. I like the sound, but it’s still quite loud even on the lowest ringer setting on my iPhone 3GS. I also wouldn’t mind a few more alerts, but I’ve been told that we can look forward to more in a future version. As for different volume levels on those alerts…pretty please with sugar on top? 😀
Conclusion
I haven’t noticed a ridiculous battery drain after two 8-hour testing shifts at work. Battery was definitely drained a little more than usual, but eight hours of light music and background push e-mail over 3G (I have Google Sync pushing as well!) got me down to about 40% by the end of the day. That seems to me to be about 10% more than before (wish push off), so sticking to EDGE should definitely get you through an entire day before having to take a pit stop at a charger.
At $0.99 this app is in pure impulse buy territory and if you’re into push email notifications at all, it’s almost definitely worth a look. I don’t mean to sound pushy, but c’mon, it’s instant gmail! 😉
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You can find PushGmail on the App Store for $0.99 (link here).
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TAGS: Email, gmail, push notification
