Just Another iPhone Blog

1,689 views

Do you use the built in email app? I used to. As a long-time MS Exchange user when I first got my iPhone I was left out in the cold. The hope that it would sync with MS Outlook was, and remains, just that, a hope.

What to do? My solution was to set up my Outlook email to automatically forward to a new Gmail account. I quickly found Gmail to be a superb email program. I loved being able to tag and archive emails instead of using folders and do not miss the all too frequent lockups I encountered in Outlook.

Gmail worked so well for me that I found myself switching to it exclusively. In recent days, I find another change taking place. Instead of using the iPhone’s built-in mail app I am increasingly using Gmail’s iPhone-optimized web email.

Why? One word… Landscape!! One quirk of the iPhone (at least currently) is that the keyboard can only be used in landscape when using the web browser. The rest of the time it only appears in portrait. That’s a shame since landscape gives you a three and a half inch keyboard that is much easier to type on (at least for someone with big fingers like me). So while the native email program requires that you are in portrait, Gmail (or any email app for that matter) on the web can be used in either landscape or portrait. And landscape is so much easier to use. If you are not in a corporate environment that requires the use of Outlook, you might want to check it out and see if it makes a difference for you.

Technorati Tags: Gmail, Gmail mobile, Gmail web app, optimized for iPhone, just another iPhone blog

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to our RSS feed!