The Google Mobile application for the iPhone now offers push notifications for Gmail and the Google Calendar. The app is free in the App Store and is said to offer "real" notifications that give you message type previews.
Previously iPhone users were required to use a 3rd party service to bring these types of notifications to their iPhones. Also included in the app is "search as you type" results.
Let us know if you're able to download the update and tell us how its working in our comment box.
If you have recently "hacktivated" your iPhone, which means activating it to work with carriers other than the official ones, you may have encountered push notification issues. In most cases, push notifications don't work properly or even don't work at all.
There is a simple fix for this and it's called Push Doctor. Simply add the following source to Cydia then look for Push Doctor: http://www.cmdshft.ipwn.me/apt/
After installing Push Doctor, reboot your iPhone.
Push Doctor works very well with 3.1.3 and 3.1.2. It is free and has the support of the Dev Team, so you can go with it safely.
Gpush is a new application available in the App Store that brings Gmail push notification to your iPhone. I have been using Gpush for a few days now and it works as advertised.
I initially installed this app because I was waiting for an important email and I didn't want to refresh my inbox every 5 minutes. So I paid the $0.99 and downloaded Gpush.
The set up is very easy and straightforward. You just have to enter your Gmail username and password and click "save". Then you can go to the settings and choose how you want to be notified. You can be notified with a sound (same as the new voicemail sound), an alert (the pop up showed in the image above), and a badge.
Right after installing Gpush, I tried it out by sending an email to myself from my Hotmail account. The push notification came almost instantly, both on my iPhone and my PC. I was really impressed! But notifications don't always come that quickly. I sometimes receive notifications a couple minutes after receiving the email on my PC.
One downside to this app is that you only get notifications of new emails. You don't actually get the email in your inbox. So after receiving a notification, you still have to launch the mail.app and retrieve the email.
Another downside, somewhat bigger, is that these push notifications seem to drain my battery very quickly. I'm not sure about that because I've been way deep in Michigan for a few days with no wifi, only running on Edge, which is notoriously bad for battery. I don't know if it's my constant twittering or my girlfriend playing too much Bejeweled, but it does seem my battery life hasn't been really good since I installed Gpush.
All in all, Gpush is a good and cheap application that does exactly what it's supposed to. However, it can become very annoying if like me, you receive a couple hundred emails a day.
You can download Gpush [iTunes Link] from the App Store for $0.99. I look forward to reading your thoughts about this application.
Boxcar is a new iPhone application that sends push notifications for Twitter. When someone DMs or @replies you, you will get a push notification in the form of a a text box and a sound notification. Tweets pushed to you can be opened in Tweetie or Twitterrific for now, with support for more apps coming soon.
It's not real time push as notifications take about a minute to be pushed to your iPhone but it still works great. The only downside I see in this app is that these push notifications can quickly become overwhelming if you have many people @replying or DMing you. For someone like me, Twitter push notifications make my ADD even worse...
I really like how the app works but it's not for me. Do you really need to be notified of every new tweet you receive?
You can download Boxcar from iTunes for $1.99.
According to TUAW, Tap Tap Revenge is the first app to have been updated to allow push notification.
If you are running OS 3.0, upon launching the new version of Tap Tap it will ask you for permission to send push notifications to your device. If you allow them, a new category called Notifications will appear in your device's main settings, which will allow you to toggle push notifications on or off. Additionally, it appears that each app will have individual settings for badges and alerts.
While the type of notification you can receive hasn't been confirmed yet, it is safe to assume that you may be notified when other users want to challenge you. Tap Tap probably won't send any notification until the official release of 3.0 in 2 days.
Until June 17th, I believe we'll see more and more of these app updates allowing push notification. Apple most likely wants some "big names" to be ready to push notifications when 3.0 becomes available for download on Wednesday.