In a nutshell...

Free ad-supported push email and Facebook japery on your Nok.

What’s it good for?

Keeping up to date with your online correspondence. And poking your friends on the move.

Judgement time...

If you’re getting a touch of the green-eyed monster over your BlackBerry-owning pals’ access to push email and a proper real time Facebook app, prepare to be jealous no longer: BlueWhaleMail offers both, and it won’t cost you a penny.

We’re normally very wary of ad-supported software (free apps and games are nice and all, but who wants huge Coca-Cola commercials clogging up their mobile’s screen?), but here the ads are mercifully unobtrusive, consisting only of tiny bars that occasionally appear at the top of the screen.

The app itself works really well. To set up the Facebook section you simply feed in your login details - the app then delivers a feed of your friends’ status and news updates, as well as allow you to update your own status, poke friends or send them messages or wall posts. The email section requires a bit more info, but all we had to do to get it linked up with our Gmail account is type in the address and password - the app took care of the other settings automatically.

Leave the app running on your mobile (it does use a fair whack of memory, mind you) and it’ll keep an eye on your inbox and Facebook account, vibrating the handset when new messages appear. Everything appears in one unified list, and there’s even a data meter to keep a track on your kilobyte count. Basically, this’ll make a really handy addition to most phones, and the fact that it’s free is a huge bonus.