OPEN

So Blackberry-maker RIM’s shares took a fall when Apple announced something or other about a mobile device the other day.

With the very opposite of the Apple fanfare a much bigger threat to the kings of push email has rolled out in the UK – a dedicated Gmail application on your mobile.

I saw this application when it launched last year, but it only worked in the US. I tried it again yesterday on a whim and found it now works on UK networks. Hoo-rah!

And it works very, very well indeed. Design is intuitive, nice shortcuts, nice and intuitive and mails load quickly – it’s as smooth as anything I’ve used on my mobile (a Nokia 6280) yet.

Given that you can happily run almost any email account through a Gmail inbox surely this means everyone can have email on the move for the price of their data tarriff alone without having to buy Blackberries or the like…

Apologies for the picture quality – it’s surprisingly hard to get mobile screengrabs…

To get it on your phone point the browser at http://gmail.com/app…