Gmail 2.0 for BlackBerry

I regularly check to see if there are updates for Mobile Google applications for my Blackberry Perl 8130 running Blackberry OS 4.3 and this week, Google released an update for their Google Mail application Gmail v2.05.1262 (gorganic) it can be downloaded from your phone OTA by visiting http://m.google.com/mail.

The first thing I noticed after I downloaded the update was that the main icon had changed for the better. After I launched the new application the load time seemed to take forever. I was concerned that because the application was built for Blackberry OS 4.2 that I had broken it. However, that was not the case and after waiting almost 3 minutes, I was delivered the the usual Gmail login screen. Once I logged in, I felt like the interface was much faster (although I am not sure if it really is as I didn't benchmark it). On to the features that have been added since the last version.

• Snazzy new icon and new mail indicator.
• Multiple Google Accounts can be added to the application and you can switch between the two. I am not sure why you would ever have multiple Gmail accounts, but maybe I am too simple minded.
• Support for Google Apps accounts.
• Support for multiple draft messages (rather than just one) although they are mobile drafts only so they do not save to Gmail proper.
  
• Immediately sends outgoing messages in the background rather than having to wait for it to send before composing or reading other messages.
• Smart linking of URL and phone numbers within emails.
• First and Last name Contact lookups (before we only had first name)
• What I call "fling" scrolling for the items and in emails
  

Gripes:

• By far my biggest gripe is that Gmail Mobile still does not support HTML emails. Google, please make that your top priority for 2.1!
  
• The "sent from gmail" is still an option to turn on/off but it's no longer included in your reply or new messages so you can not delete the message if you wanted to.
• Ability to see labels from the inbox so you can archive or take action on those which have already been labeled by filters
• No ability to add or modify contacts.
• The ability to show up with a new message indicator and number at the top of the blackberry. I know that this would require work with blackberry, but I think it would be worth it. To get around this I have put the blackberry app in my short list of 5 applications that are on my home row.
  

Anyhow, I think overall the application has gotten better overall and I can not wait to see what new versions will bring!