It turns out that the older versions of the Gmail mobile site are no longer available and the "older version" link is now less useful because it sends users to the Gmail site for feature phones and for unsupported browsers.
It's also interesting to notice that the "desktop" link loads the basic HTML version, not the regular desktop interface. If you click "standard" in the basic HTML interface, Gmail sends you back to the mobile version. I've only been able to load the standard interface by using Chrome's "request desktop site" feature.
