After having been absent from the App Store for a few weeks, iGmail came back all of a sudden last night and its new price (FREE) probably explains its absence. When I first reviewed iGmail it cost $2.99 and the remarkable thing about it was the extra large text-entry area and full-screen support for the […]
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iPhone App Update and Ressurection: iGmail 2.1 adds paid PUSH notifications and paid Google Apps support

Nov 19th 2009 by

iGmail 2.1

After having been absent from the App Store for a few weeks, iGmail came back all of a sudden last night and its new price (FREE) probably explains its absence. When I first reviewed iGmail it cost $2.99 and the remarkable thing about it was the extra large text-entry area and full-screen support for the browser-based Gmail app. Google has since released an update to the Gmail interface to allow for auto-adjusting text entry boxes and much easier scrolling in long e-mails, which means that the original iGmail client only had one major advantage left: full screen mode and left-orientation lock (see review for details).

iGmail 2.1 isn’t without a couple of new features (aside from the new price, which likely takes advantage of this), but I can’t help but feel as though some customers were misled by the older iGmail app description. I believe the old description talked about Google Apps support coming in 1.4, but as far as I know, the app jumped straight from 1.x to 2.1. I can’t state that as a fact because I’m basing this on memory and the comments on my initial iGmail review, but if this is true, then some people will actually have paid $5.00 for the ability to use iGmail with their accounts — $2.99 for the initial 1.0 release price and then $1.99 for the in-app purchase of Google Apps support in 2.1. The two other notable features in the app are PUSH notifications for $0.99 (more on this later) and the it’s-about-bloody-time fix of the Offline mode which just wouldn’t work before.

I paid for the push service to try it out, and it’s a little more flexible than I expected. You can set it to check your actual Gmail account, or it can check a “fake” IMAP-enabled Gmail account that you create so that you never have to give iGMail your real login information. Push services are a little slower than Google Sync’s native PUSH, but that might be because last night was launch night. The really confusing part here is that iGmail describes this feature as “PUSH notification for year 2009”. I’m hoping that’s just a bad description for the service, seeing as this update was released halfway through November…so either my $0.99 is buying me a full year of service or a pathetic 1.5 months. I’d clarify this if I could, but Idemfactor Solutions have no Twitter account, no e-mail support, and no live website.

However, this lack of information should really come as no surprise. After all, we’re talking about a 1.x $2.99 app that disappeared all of a sudden a few weeks ago and re-appeared last night as a 2.x free app. One dollar isn’t much to pay for a year of PUSH service (and that’s why I tried it), but your paying customer would like to know how much time their money is actually buying him, Idemfactor. Can I have my solution now?

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