Once you’ve got your Gmail account set up, it’s time to start reading mail. Launch the Gmail app by tapping it in the Application Tray. You see a list of emails, but the list you see depends on what you were doing the last time you were using Gmail. For example, if the last time you used Gmail you were in your Inbox, you see all the mail in your Inbox. If you were viewing mail in a different label (the term Gmail uses for a folder), you see just the mail in that label.
Note
While most email programs use folders to let you organize your email, Google uses labels in its web-based email, and that’s what you use on the Droid 2.
Most of the time, of course, you’ll land in your inbox, which lists all your mail. Mail you haven’t read is boldfaced and has a white background; the rest of your mail is in a normal font and has a gray background. The top of your screen displays the total number of messages in your inbox, and also your email address.
Note
The Droid 2 regularly checks your Gmail account for new mail, and if it finds any, it displays an email icon in the Notification bar. Pull down the Notification bar, and then tap the Gmail notification to launch Gmail.
When you’re viewing mail in a list like this, each piece of mail shows the following:
The sender
The subject line
The date it was sent, or if it was sent today, the time it was sent
To open a message, tap it. Scroll up, down, and sideways in the message using the normal Droid 2 gestures of dragging and flicking.
All the links you see in the email message are live—tap them, and you go to the web page to which they’re linked, using the Droid 2’s web browser. Tap an email address, and a new email message opens to that address. Tap a YouTube video, and the video plays, and so on.
In fact, in many instances, the text in the email message doesn’t even need to be a link for the Droid 2 to take some kind of action on it. If there’s a phone number in an email, tap it to call that number. Just tap the phone button to dial. If you tap a street address, the Droid 2 shows you that location in Google Maps.
Note
Gmail, Google Calendar, and your Gmail contacts are all set up to sync between your Droid 2 and your various Google accounts on the Web. All this happens automatically, in the background, without you having to take any action. You can turn syncing off, or choose to sync manually, though. For details, see Gmail and Google.
There are two basic kinds of graphics you may get in Gmail. Some are embedded in the content of the message itself—for example, a company logo. Other times, the sender attaches the image to the messages, like a family member sending you Thanksgiving photos.
If the graphics are embedded in the content of the message, you see a button titled Show pictures. In some cases you don’t really need to see the graphics (who cares what a company’s logo looks like, really?). In that case, do nothing, However, in other cases, the graphic is an integral part of the message, like a graph or a map. If that happens, tap Show pictures. You see all the graphics on full display, right in the message.
If someone has attached a graphic, you see the graphic displayed in the email message. You also see a small paper clip icon near the top of the message, which indicates that the email has an attachment.
To save the picture to your Droid 2, tap Download, and it gets downloaded to the Gallery on your SD card. For details about the Gallery, turn to Opening the Gallery.
Gmail lets you download graphics attachments, including those in the .jpg, .png, and .gif formats. But it doesn’t let you download other kinds of attachments. You can preview Word, Excel, and PowerPoint files, among others, but you can’t download them onto your Droid 2. And some file types, you can’t even preview.
If you get an attachment that you can preview, you see a paper clip icon near the top of the mail, as well as a more prominent one at the bottom of the message. The attachment’s name and a Preview button also appear next to the paper clip icon.
Tap the Preview button, and the attachment opens. If it’s a Word, Excel, or PowerPoint file, it opens in an app called QuickOffice that’s built into the Droid 2.
If you’re reading an email message from someone and want to add her to your Contact list, tap the small button to the left of her name. A screen appears that lets you create a new contact with the sender’s name and email address, or add the information to an existing contact.
If the person is already in your Contacts list, when you tap the name, a list of icons appears that lets you respond to her in a number of ways, including by email, phone, and so on, based on the contact information you have.
