I'm not enamored with Gmail's address book, however. It feels a bit like an afterthought, compared to Outlook's Contacts. For instance, unlike Gmail Contacts, Outlook contacts let you assign tasks, flag for follow-up, and has fields for anniversaries, birthdays, assistant's name, manager's name, and spouse's name, which you don't get with Gmail Contacts.

So for the time being, at least, I'm still syncing my iPhone's address book with Outlook on my PC. The good news is that Google Sync for Mobile gives you that option: You can choose to sync only your Google calendar with your handheld, or only your Gmail Contacts with your handheld, or both.

Another minor complaint: When you create a new appointment in your iPhone's native Calendar app, you can set up two reminders--one for, say, a day before the event and a second one for 15 minutes before. I've found this feature extremely useful. However, when you use Google to sync your Google calendars with your iPhone's native Calendar app, you lose the ability on your iPhone to set up two alerts for the same appointment. You can set up to five alerts for one calendar entry within Google Calendar on your computer, however.

The Wrap Up

With Google Sync for Mobile, Google has some competition from Microsoft, as always. The software giant's , also in beta and also free, wirelessly syncs your Windows Mobile phone's contacts, calendar entries, photos, and other information with a Microsoft-hosted site. So if you're a Windows Mobile user, you might want to give My Phone a try.