"Two years after Yahoo surprised everyone by launching push Yahoo Mail for iPhone, Google adds push support for Gmail. And it's not limited to iPhone, it also works for Windows Mobile devices. "Push e-mail is used to describe e-mail systems that provide an "always-on" capability, in which new e-mail is instantly and actively transferred (pushed) as it arrives by the mail delivery agent (MDA) (commonly called mail server) to the mail user agent (MUA), also called the e-mail client. E-mail clients include smartphones and, less strictly, IMAP personal computer mail applications," explains Wikipedia. Instead of periodically fetching new messages, mail clients receive notifications as soon as there's a new message. Applications no longer waste bandwidth and you're able to read a message shortly after it was sent." - arnaldostream from Bookmarklet