post past :: james murty

I have been using Google Apps – Google’s set of hosted email and collaboration tools that are available from your own domain name – for some time now. The service works very well but it has one annoying drawback: many of Google’s other services and tools do not recognise your Google Apps identity. To log in to the Google Groups site, for example, you have to use a standard gmail.com account.

One of the tools that refused to work with my Google Apps account was the Java-based mail application for older mobile phones. I have a modest but functional Nokia phone with Symbian 40 OS (I think) and a rubbish email client (I know). Google offered a nifty little email reader application for phones like this that worked well for standard Gmail accounts but not for Google Apps accounts, until now.

A Google Apps compatible version of this email client is now available if you point your mobile browser at m.google.com/a. It works like the Gmail-only version of the application, but is an entirely new version and even has a differently coloured blue icon to prove it. More info about the application is available here, but be aware that it only works with US English.

I am not sure when this application was actually released. I have gone looking for it every couple of months for the last year, assuming Google would create it sooner or later. Well, it wasn’t soon, but finally later has arrived.