On my previous phone I used Gmail mobile application for managing my email communication and Google reader for mobile (WAP) to browse my RSS subscriptions.
Now that I finally have a proper mobile phone, I want to explore what Google has to offer for my phone.
Google Latitude
Latitude, which comes together with Google maps, synchronize your current position (using GPS or AGPS) with Google servers, allowing you and your friends to know who is near who, get updated with each other’s status and communicate using this application.
You can easily navigate between your friends on the map with the 3 and 6 keys, update the status directly from the application, and even send SMS to the people you find in the map. From playing with it for several days it looks pretty cool and has a great potential.
Check out this video from Google explainging it a bit more.
Another cool feature is that it connects to internet only when the position is changed, and disconnects when the update is finished. This saves both on battery and bandwidth costs.
As I mentioned, Latitude is part of Google maps, so you get all the great features of maps as well. A Few months ago when I was in Amsterdam, I used Google maps with my friend’s Nokia N95 to search for a Crumpler’s store and navigate there. It worked just great! It was just like doing it from my PC, plus it had my position so it directed me very precisely till I found the store.
One more feature is the street view. Google is taking special panoramic pictures on main streets, allowing you to explore it directly from your mobile. Check out this screenshot I took from my Nokia:
Google Sync
Yesterday Google lunched a
beta service allowing you to synchronize the phone contacts and calendar with Gmail account. For symbian devices synchronization it is using the SyncML protocol.
After setting up my Nokia with the appropriate settings and crossing my fingers that nothing will be erased, I chose the contacts sync option (my calenadr is in sync with my work outlook calendar). A minute later all my phone’s contact were on my gmail account! Including the pictures! Since it supports bi-directional sync, I modified some details on the gmail account and synced again – and it really seems to be working (although it take some time for the changes be updated on the servers before the phone can be updated).
The one thing left for Google to add to this service, is email synchronization. In one of their blogs they mentioned they will support Mail for Exchange which is really great news and even better option than SyncML, since it will push emails into the mobile devices instead of making the phones periodically check for them.
