Gmail rocks the iPhone and iPod touch with new features

Wow. So much Googley goodness this week, it’s making our heads spin. Two days ago Google rolls out a wicked good update to its iPhone and iPod touch interface to make all the Google web apps faster and easier to use for mobile Safari users. This release preceded the Stevenote address at Macworld on Tuesday which included the announcement about this week’s firmware update to 1.1.3 and all the cool features contained within. But as Steve focused all the attention on Apple, Google was sneaking in its own updates to make Gmail the king of email on the iPhone and iPod touch. Here are the Gmail updates you probably don’t know about.

Google has optimized Gmail’s use of Ajax to make the application much more responsive which should make EDGE users very happy. For those of you non-geeks, Ajax is is the secret sauce that makes Google Maps so good, and is also responsible for ushering in a whole new breed of web applications that do away with browser page loading. And Google’s mastery of Ajax implementation really shines now in Gmail when used on the iPhone and iPod touch by pre-loading the most recent messages for you. You no longer have to refresh the screen to see your new messages in your inbox because they will appear for you automatically.

Gmail also auto-completes now, just like Google Suggest. You no longer need to tap the full text or word because Gmail will suggest the word for you from just a couple of letters. This will save you loads of time tapping email messages since you can complete most words with just a couple of taps. Suh-weet!

And finally, the coolest feature from Google, the 1.1.3 firmware upgrade will automatically reconfigure your Gmail from POP to IMAP. This applies to users that originally set up Gmail on the iPhone or iPod touch by tapping the large Gmail icon in the email set up screen. IMAP means that your email on your mobile device will now sync with your email server so that messages you have read on your mobile Safari will show up as ‘read’ in your Gmail web interface. The same goes for deleting messages, so be careful when deleting them because the IMAP behavior is different than POP. Email you delete in the iPhone or iPod touch will be moved to your Gmail’s trash folder in the web interface and be permanently deleted in 30 days.

Here’s the wrap of of new Gmail features:

• Pre-loading data for faster performance
• Auto-complete to make tapping text easier and faster
• IMAP is configured by default

Thanks Google!