Gmail Mobile Application Upgraded to 1.5
Google has updated the application you can install on your mobile device to get a richer experience with your Gmail account. The new version, version 1.5 (the old was 1.0) is an improvement, but a lot of the poor design still hasn’t been fixed.
First, your introductory experience with the application: As expected, a page with two blank text fields, one for your Gmail address, one for your password. Only, they aren’t text fields! They’re links to this wonderful page:
Yes, a page that looks like something broke! Instead of letting you enter text into a simple, standard text field the application takes you to a seperate page with a big blank text box where you are supposed to enter the information requested on the previous page. With text input fields being a basic, brain-dead element of UI design, why did Google decide to go this route? God only knows.
Worse, because of the poor performance of everything Java (and yes, regrettably, this is still a Java app, not a native Windows Mobile app), even entering text in this page is a chore. It doesn’t recognize my backspace key or my arrow keys, text selected becomes immediately unselected, the occasional keystroke is completely ignored or dropped, and caps lock turns on and off at will. We’re talking text input, not rocket surgery, people!
For some reason, the text input page doesn’t even start off letting you type in the text input box. You have to click/tap/select it first, even though there’s literally nothing else on the page. Why not start with a blinking cursor? So, it’s click, click, type (if you make a mistake, cancel and start again because backspace doesn’t work), click Done, click, click, type, click Done, click Sign In. Talk about making things easy for the user.
Why am I going crazy about this? Because the rest of the application is pretty good, but the first screen you see is such a chore, you might give up without even trying. Google needs to get it right at the first user experience, otherwise there won’t be a second.
Naturally, I try to sign in, and my connection was dropped throughout all the clicking and backing up, so Java asks me for permission, not once, but twice, and instead of taking me back to the application and signing me in, it takes me back to the MIDlet Manager page. Gotta love Java. Really, a great choice for an application platform.
Anyway, here’s the inbox view:
The scroll bar is too small for anything but a tiny fingernail to grab, which is fine, since it doesn’t scroll, it paginates. And if you miss it, you get to read an email! Scroll with the arrow keys, and save yourself the tsuris.
There are a good number of hotkeys, so you can archive, mark as read, star, report spam, delete email, go back to the inbox, search, and compose just by hitting the appropriate number (or the asterisk key). However, they are bound to the keys on a traditional phone’s keypad, with no shortcuts for letters on a keyboard, like my PDA has, so I need to hold down a modifier key, or just give up on shortcuts at all (which is exactly what I do). How about shortcuts for keyboard folk?
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ARGHH!!! I just discovered another annoyance! If you press Menu to close the menu, it doesn’t close the menu! Instead, it selects the item highlighted in the menu, and asks you to confirm if you really want to perform that action on that email, and the same Menu button is now the confirm button, compounding the likelihood you’ll screw up!. Really, I clicked menu to use the menu, not to leave it? Who thought that was good UI design? I lost two emails, maybe three, because of that.
When you try to send an email, you get this page:
Good and simple, especially the “Sent from Gmail for mobile” signature (by the way, when I clicked to close that menu, it tried to send my message. Brilliant). Click on the To field, and you get a page with your most popular contacts, and check boxes so you can select multiples (you can use the menu to get at the complete list of contacts.
By the way, the Subject and message body areas just take you to that empty page for text entry. Gotta hate it.
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So, the good things about this application is that it lets you browse your email without reloading webpages and wasting bandwidth, it’s fast and convenient as an application, instead of a website. You can now click to have your phone call phone numbers that are listed in emails. The bad is that the UI design still makes a lot of mistakes, stupid little mistakes that should be easily avoided.
Google wants to have a smash hit in the mobile space, designing some sort of Google mobile software system and dropping hints of a GPhone, but the live applications they’ve released so far show a severe disconnect with proper UI design. If the iPhone is a fashion model, Google mobile has the same sense of style as… a typical Google engineer. If Google can learn from these mistakes, there’s hope, but for now I’m just frustrated and annoyed.
Go to Gmail.com/app if I haven’t scared you off. It’s worth downloading, since it is a much better way to access Gmail, but be prepared to be annoyed until you get used to its quirks.
Hi,
Not sure if you’ve used other Java apps on your windows mobile phone, but it’s the JVM that actually creates that dumb “content-less page” for entering text (at least, I would guess this is true considering I see it in all my other apps, including Opera Mini). So You’d probably find it works differently on other phones.
And the thing that sucks the MOST about entering text in apps on my phone is the fact that I can’t copy and paste.
Anyway, thanks for the notification of the release. I’ve no idea why I didn’t see Google’s notifications…
Comment by James | November 9, 2007