Gmail registration now possible on featurephones

Google has made it possible for people to create Gmail accounts from featurephone browsers.

The move, aimed at the developing world, was announced on Google's Africa blog on Tuesday. Previously, it was only possible to set up a Gmail account from a computer or a smartphone.

"What if you have no easy access to either a computer or an expensive smartphone? This is the case for hundreds of millions of people around the world," product manager Dimitris Meretakis wrote in a post on the blog.

Meretakis said those wishing to sign up from their featurephone browsers simply need to visit mail.google.com to do so. "We wanted to make sure that users will be able to sign up using almost any sort of phone," he wrote.

ZDNet UK has asked Google what changes have actually been made to the browser-based Gmail sign-up page in order to make registration from featurephones possible, but the company was unable to provide this information at the time of writing.