Google Develops Mobile Gmail App

Google has released a mobile Java application that dramatically speeds up Gmail. The unique helper application resides on the user's J2ME-enabled mobile phone and adds usability improvements to the Gmail interface alongside speed enhancements. The most powerful feature of the application for me is the ability to make email attachments mobile-friendly - for example, it would dynamically resize an image for displaying on the mobile phone. It can also display Microsoft Word documents and PDF files.. very cool.

The Google press release lists the main features of the Gmail App as the following:

• Up to five times faster access and use, thanks to automatic pre-fetching of messages
• Drastically reduced clicks and scrolling to access email
• Fewer keystrokes for reading, composing, or searching mail
• Attachments, including files and photos, viewable and automatically resized to fit the user's phone

Head over to gmail.com/app on your mobile device to install the Gmail helper application. You also might want to check out the online demo. I think Google is on to something with this helper application. Current browsers probably rule out the need for such an application on computers, but there must be some web service that could benefit from a similar helper app.