When I saw this headline on BerryReview, I nearly flipped. It was over a year ago that we debated pushing your Gmail vs. the Gmail BlackBerry app, and the debate rages on through today. But to add push email to the application would completely change the game. In fact, if not for the message integration issue, I’d say that the app would win convincingly. However, there’s a bit caveat to all this: it’s not free. Boooo. Yeah, it’d be nice to have a push version of the Gmail app, but it looks like you’ll have to pony up for the privilege. Details after the jump.
The upgrade is only available for users of Google Apps Premier Edition and Education Edition users. Why they’re limiting it to paying customers (as if!), we’re not quite certain. We can only hope that it’s coming at some point in the future to us freeloaders.
Actually, scratch that. It’s not all we can hope for. As Ronen notes, what we can really hope for is Google and RIM working together to create a two-way sync for Gmail. That’s probably the biggest kink in the system, and it can get quite annoying to someone who receives hundreds of emails per day on Gmail (no, I’m not popular, just have long conversations via email). However, as we see in the comments to our Gmail post, some people like the lack of sync. I think, however, that they are outnumbered.
You can check out Google Apps Premier Edition here. Looks like it costs $50/year. Probably not worth it for most, but perhaps some will like the functionality enough to fork over the dough. The rest of us will just wait, twiddling our thumbs, for two-way sync over BIS.
7 comments… read them below or add one
Sweet! My school just signed a contract with Google for Google Apps for Education! I’m assuming this means I’ll have access to this! :D
well played Google, well played
NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!
Is it possible to sync all data from outlook, webmail (gmail) and blackberry?
I’m running Exchange server in office plus blackberry server but maintenance cost and license is to high.
I think is good idea to switch to Google!
The interesting thing is that GMail, on *some* days (it seems to decide, at random, when it will or will not work) it DOES do a 2-way sync. Usually when I don’t want it to or don’t need it to. I *am* getting the push emails and, at times, when I delete something on the PC side of things (Entourage, Outlook, browser, etc) it actually reconciles and deletes it on the BB as well. It doesn’t *always* do this (which would be lovely if it would), but it looks as though Google is “on it” for now and we don’t, necessarily, have to have the Premier Apps.
((For those of you who do not think I am, indeed, getting “push email” for GMail, what else would you call it when, nearly instantaneously, someone presses the “send” button on an outgoing email to my GMail address I have notification on my phone?))
Hmm. I have a BB device with no BIS (just like using the phone for its OS, ergonamics, etc.) I wonder if the Gmail push capaibility will require BIS. Right now I have a Sprint data plan that allows me to browse the web with Opera, etc. Would be nice if push Gmail could work with that.
Well the version of the Gmail App I have (2.0.6) decided to auto check for my email every 20 minutes, which is great IF YOU HAVE A DATA PLAN…
Be warned if you do not. If you don’t sign out of the app it might bite your head off in data fees.