Google shows offline Gmail app running on iPhone
Google on Wednesday demonstrated how a future version of Gmail could soon run offline on mobile browsers compatible with HTML5, including the iPhone's mobile Safari browser.
Vice president of engineering Vic Gundotra called it a "technical concept" that Google has "never shown publicly before" during a live demo at the 2009 GSMA Mobile World Congress, which can be seen in the video from iPhone Buzz (below).
As the audience watched, the executive brought up Gmail in the mobile version of Safari and then switched his iPhone into Airplane Mode, which disables all forms of wireless transmissions. He then returned to Safari and was able to access and manipulate e-mails from within his Gmail account, making changes that would later synchronize once his iPhone's network access was re-established.
Facilitating this functionality are three emerging Web standards, he explained, namely the W3C Database specification and W3C App Cache specification, both of which fall under the umbrella of HTML5, and both of which are already supported by the latest version of the iPhone Software.
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