Gpush is a new application available in the App Store that brings Gmail push notification to your iPhone. I have been using Gpush for a few days now and it works as advertised.
I initially installed this app because I was waiting for an important email and I didn't want to refresh my inbox every 5 minutes. So I paid the $0.99 and downloaded Gpush.
The set up is very easy and straightforward. You just have to enter your Gmail username and password and click "save". Then you can go to the settings and choose how you want to be notified. You can be notified with a sound (same as the new voicemail sound), an alert (the pop up showed in the image above), and a badge.
Right after installing Gpush, I tried it out by sending an email to myself from my Hotmail account. The push notification came almost instantly, both on my iPhone and my PC. I was really impressed! But notifications don't always come that quickly. I sometimes receive notifications a couple minutes after receiving the email on my PC.
One downside to this app is that you only get notifications of new emails. You don't actually get the email in your inbox. So after receiving a notification, you still have to launch the mail.app and retrieve the email.
Another downside, somewhat bigger, is that these push notifications seem to drain my battery very quickly. I'm not sure about that because I've been way deep in Michigan for a few days with no wifi, only running on Edge, which is notoriously bad for battery. I don't know if it's my constant twittering or my girlfriend playing too much Bejeweled, but it does seem my battery life hasn't been really good since I installed Gpush.
All in all, Gpush is a good and cheap application that does exactly what it's supposed to. However, it can become very annoying if like me, you receive a couple hundred emails a day.
You can download Gpush [iTunes Link] from the App Store for $0.99. I look forward to reading your thoughts about this application.
