I'm using Mobile Gmail on Sony Ericsson P1i, a popular business phone in these parts.
Since I don't have the installation files for the old versions, here's a screenshot from the new one:
The problem is that the old versions (1.0, 1.5) were full-scren applications, with their own user interfaces streamlined for their specific needs. The new version is trying to "integrate" itself into the OS (Symbian UIQ in this case) by using more of OS-specific controls, failing miserably.
The first glaring problem is that in this new mode, a third of the screen space is wasted on the OS interface. To get a feeling on how the old versions looked, simply imagine the Gmail application spread over the whole screen, as-is, without other changes from this screenshot UI. Symbian's Java implementation really sucks in this mode. I've used other phones with J2ME implementations and all have better Java/OS integration than Symbian.
A consequence of this is that there's no easy way to access the Gmail specific application menu. The user needs to click the "More" button in the screenshot (in this case, either by a finger or by a stylus), to bring the OS-specific menu:
Now, the user must select the "Menu" item (either by scrolling to it, or selecting it with a finger or the stylus), to get the real Gmail menu:
When Mobile Gmail was a full-screen application, this menu was readily accessible by a single click or a finger press on the "Menu" item within the application.
As for the features still not implemented, the most important for me is message quoting. Any kind of quoting. Really, I'm not kidding. When the message is viewed, users can choose to reply to it, (also by going through the OS specific menu dance) which leads to the following screen:
Notice there's no quoted message in the "edit box". Not only that, but the edit box isn't really an edit box, just a rectangle sitting there and looking pretty. Clicking the rectangle opens the real edit box, which is OS-specific (has been in all versions of Mobile Gmail):
Though this device is capable of editing several pages of text (I mean real text, A4 full page, etc.) with the right applications (yes, it also has copy-paste), Mobile Gmail chooses to present the user with a blank edit box. This is simply rude - quoting and quote editing is practically required by netiquette.
I'm not expecting iPhone-like usability here (and some of the bugs described are directly caused by J2ME, which is why everyone is evading its ui like the plague), but regressions like these are ridiculous.
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