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The popular GMail service has been available in many shapes and forms, as well as being supported by both Google and third-party applications on mobile devices. The one feature that has been missing for some time is native push notification of new emails arriving in the inbox. Workarounds have been available, but those required additional software to be installed and in some cases, purchases to be made. Now, Google has made push notifications available for iPhone/iPod Touch users, as well as for Windows Mobile devices.

For iPhone users, the installation of the iPhone update to 3.0 is a prerequisite. One restriction that will prevent me from using this feature is the fact that one is able to create only a single Microsoft Exchange mail profile on most devices, including the iPhone.

I could easily do with three or more such accounts on my mobile device, but need to restrict myself to the most important one and then retrieve mail from the other Exchange-based accounts in alternate ways.

That’s a huge pity and something I hope will be rectified soon. If you are using GMail and don’t yet have an Exchange mail account set up on your device, the Google Sync help page provides step by step instructions on how to configure the account.

The only other limitation I’m aware of is that it is not possible to search through all mail in the GMail account – only those messages downloaded to the device are searchable. That’s no different to having a non-push GMail account on the phone.

Of course, it is possible to synchronize your Google Calendar to the device as well. See this page for more details on how to do that.

This device caught my attention and looks almost perfect. XPERIA X1 sounds like a skunk works stealth fighter ready to launch from Area 51. Instead, it’s a converged device with a rather elegant sliding keyboard beneath the screen.

The XPERIA X1 as all the usual features you’d expect from a modern converged device. There’s Bluetooth, WLAN and HSDPA and various other connectivity features. Plug a USB thumb drive into it and you’ll be able to browse the contents. All the expected PIM features and their synchronisation find a place, as does the 3.2MP camera. A nice navigational aid is the ability to see up to nine thumbnails of running applications on the home screen.

The screen is touch-sensitive and the orientation of the display changes depending on whether or not the keyboard has been slid out. 400MB of memory is on-board and additional storage may be added by slotting in a MicroSD card.

I was really excited when I saw the X1. There’s little not to like and it would be a great replacement for an E90. Except that it runs Windows Mobile. And I’m not so sure I want to trade Symbian for that…

The full specifications may be found here.

Thankfully, we have Android to look forward to.

According to GPS And Co, Asus is preparing to launch a new Windows Mobile smartphone that borrows many design cues from Nokia‘s E90. The Asus M930W has a 520MHz Marvel processor, 128MB of RAM and 265MB of ROM and is HSDPA-capable. The camera shoots at 3MP and the MicroSD slot can read memory cards up to 32GB. The usual connectivity options include wireless LAN, Bluetooth and USB.

I’m not sure whether the images below are mock-ups or taken of the real thing. In the closed state, the M930W is usable as a phone and probably provides access to applications.

When opened up, the larger keyboard and (hopefully) larger screen is available.

GPS And Co seems to think that the device may be available early on in 2008. Maybe this will be one of the announcements at the upcoming 3GSM conference in Barcelona. The other highly anticipated announcement is an actual Google phone running Android. A prototype of that device has been captured by the team at Gizmodo. Seems like it could be an interesting year for gadgets