Google Releases New, Consolidated BlackBerry App For Plain And Google Apps GmailGoogle Releases New, Consolidated BlackBerry App For Plain And Google Apps Gmail

The Gmail Blog's suggestion to give Gmail a whirl on Google's new Chrome browser (be sure to take our Chrome Poll) isn't the only interesting news to come out of the Gmail camp. An understandable inaccuracy in my coverage of Google's implementation of Google Apps-based Gmail and the resulting exchange with Google over the matter reveals big news for BlackBerry users who access either version of Gmail (the plain, standard one or the Google Apps version).Last week, I posted a blog about how BlackBerry wins versus Windows Mobile for Google Apps-based Gmail. For almost a year, I gave Windows Mobile a hard, honest try at being a good mobile client for accessing my Google Apps-based Gmail (which is a bit different than the plain vanilla Gmail).

In that story, I mentioned how Google's custom downloadable Gmail client for the BlackBerry didn't support the Google Apps version of Gmail and that Google recommends that Google Apps users use their mobile browser to browse their Google Apps Gmail inboxes instead. As it turns out, Google actually has, or better yet, had, a completely separate download for Google Apps users. I just couldn't find it and even the spokespeople for Google say they could have done a better job in highlighting its availability.

For example, before visiting pages with a slow mobile browser like the one on the BlackBerry, I'll sometimes check them out on a PC first. When I used FireFox on my Mac to visit the page that Google says to visit in order to get the BlackBerry download for Gmail, this is what I saw:

As you can see, it appears to instruct Google Apps users to use their browsers instead of the application. But according to Google spokesperson Andrew Kovacs, my mistake was in accessing the page with my Mac instead of with the BlackBerry itself. Apparently, the page auto-detects the device you're browsing from and dynamically changes its content accordingly. Had I browsed to the page using my BlackBerry (which I actually did), this is what I would have seen:

When I first installed that application, it wouldn't let me open my Google Apps-based Gmail account. That's when I revisited the page with my PC, where I thought I saw a confirmation that I had to browse for Google Apps Gmail instead.

What I didn't realize is that if I scrolled down, I would have seen this:

That's right! Something I would not have seen on my Mac: a separate BlackBerry download for Google Apps users named Mail by Google (the other BlackBerry application for plain vanilla Gmail was called "Gmail").

Around the same time Google was straightening out my confusion, an information reader noted that there were indeed two different applications for each of Google's versions of Gmail. Wrote that reader:

Indeed, if you download the regular Gmail application, it appears as a red icon on your BlackBerry and if you download the Google Apps one, you'll see a blue icon. But I did not concur with reader's assessment that it worked great. Instead, the "blue" app for Google Apps was really more of special browser. Whereas the "red" app is a bit more of an offline client, Kovacs confirmed that the blue app doesn't work at all when the BlackBerry can't get its signal. In an offline situation like that, here's the sort of message you'd get:

If you're a BlackBerry user who's familiar with this subtle but incredibly important difference, then Google has some news for you. Delete all of your old clients, go back to the page for downloading the BlackBerry client and download the regular Gmail client instead. Why? Because while you were sleeping, the little gremlins at Google fixed the regular Gmail client to not only support the Google Apps version of Gmail, but to support multiple Gmail accounts (plain or Google Apps) at the same time.

According to Kovacs, "We are moving towards sunsetting the (older) 'Mail by Google' version and users will access Gmail and Google Apps through the new single Gmail application (red icon)."

Kovacs also mentioned some of the other new features in the BlackBerry client: Overall faster performance, multiple mobile drafts, and an undo for the last action (the shortcut key is 'z').

Oh, and about running Gmail on Chrome. My favorite part of that is the way you can drop down Chrome's menu while on a Gmail or Google Calendar page (or any page, for that matter) and with a few clicks, populate the desktop, the Start Menu, and the Quick Launch Bar with a shortcut to that page (it even shows you the icon it's going to use in advance).