Gmail push comes to HiPhone, Windows Mobile,OPhone

On Tuesday, Google expanded the over-the-air syncing capabilities in its Google Sync service to include Google’s email, but only for the iPhone and iPod Touch (version 3.0), and for Windows Mobile phones.

Google Sync began as a beta service to sync Google calendar items and contacts to iPhone, Windows Mobile and Symbian Series 60 phones. Owners of iPhones, iPod Touches and Windows Mobile phones can now set it up to include Gmail messages as well.

The phones will receive Google Sync messages through their native email, calendar and address book apps. Depending on a user’s settings, their phone could vibrate and/or chime to let them know a new message has come in.

Note that Google Sync will not push visual notification boxes to iPhone and iPod Touch interfaces. For that, users will need third-party apps such as GPush for iPhone. Instead, it pushes email from the server to the phone, rather than pulls in a list of email messages, a request that the phone’s email client makes of the server.

BlackBerry and Nokia Symbian Series 60 users will not have access to pushed Gmail yet, but they can still sync calendar and contact events to the phone’s built-in address book and calendar.

To get started, visit the Google Sync website from your desktop or mobile browser. The step-by-step setup process is best navigated from a computer, and will require users to ultimately configure their phone to sync over the Microsoft Exchange Server.