Freedmail
Google has announced, via its usual medium of a blog post, that a new version of the Gmail mobile app has been released via the Android market. The significance of this is that it's not longer lied to updates of Android itself. Hopefully this is the start of a general trend.
As long-suffering Motorola Milestone users, for example, are currently experiencing, there can be a long delay between Google releasing a new version of Android and a handset-maker releasing its version. This frustration is exaggerated if you're dependent on that update to get new features of Google apps you use.
There's another matter we suspect Google is addressing with this precedent - antitrust. Look at all the trouble Microsoft got into by tying pieces of its own software to Windows. It's already starting to look like Android will be the Windows of the mobile world in terms of ubiquity, and once its market share reaches a certain level, regulators will take an ever-keener interest in how Google might be using the platform to give its own mobile products an unfair competitive advantage.
Having said that, you still need Android version 2.2 for the latest Gmail and Google Goggles doesn't seem to recognise the QR code Google included in the blog post. Maybe that's because we're still on Android 2.1...
Anyway, here's what's new. Key message actions such as reply, forward, etc now stick to the top of the screen to save you having to scroll to the bottom of a long message to access them. The mobile app now has the same functionality as the desktop one in condensing long email threads into a cascade. Finally there is limited Priority Inbox functionality. Here are some illustrations.
