

One reason Gmail for iOS still sucks  - sudonim
http://iamnotaprogrammer.com/One-reason-gmail-ios-still-sucks.html

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tvwonline
Google, I have the solution.

Step 1: Checkout the Sparrow source code

Step 2: Find and Replace All on the word "Sparrow" and change it to "Gmail"

Step 3: Add push notifications.

Compile and send to the app store.

~~~
Firehed
I dunno about that - I really wanted to like Sparrow for iOS (aside from a
couple bugs dealing with insane volumes of email, I love it on the desktop)
but it never felt quite right to me.

I've actually just now reinstalled it to check what bothered me so much, and
it's the same issue I have with the new Gmail app: swipe-to-archive simply
isn't there. Frequency of me archiving messages: extremely high. Frequency of
changing between different folders: nearly zero. Yet the left-to-right swipe
which gives you the "delete" button in Mail brings that weird Facebook-esque
hierarchical navbar that's become so prevalent in the last couple years.

Swiping the other direction exposes five options, two of which (I assume
"archive" and "delete") have rather ambiguous icons. Mental energy - do not
like (see also: new Gmail web UI).

When viewing an individual message, it's two taps to do all of the stuff that
takes one in Mail. The designers traded always-visible icons for extra message
real estate; clearly a matter of personal preference, but the wrong one for
me.

Just goes to show how oddly personal the email experience can be, especially
when you consider everyone's various workflows.

~~~
bruceboughton
>> swipe-to-archive simply isn't there

>> Swiping the other direction exposes five options, two of which (I assume
"archive" and "delete") have rather ambiguous icons

Hyperbole, much?

~~~
Firehed
No. Swipe-to-archive means working the same way as it works in every single
other iOS app that implements that functionality: left-to-right.

edit - To clarify: widely-adopted shortcuts are only effective when they work
the same everywhere. Imagine if some applications mapped "paste" to ^P instead
of ^V. It might as well not be there.

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pud
I love the Gmail iPhone app.

In particular, I love that it lets me change the "from" address, similarly to
how the gmail.com site lets me do that.

Neither Mail.app nor Sparrow made it easy to change the from.

I have a few different email addresses that all get forwarded to my gmail
account. Finally my mobile mail problem -- being able to select my from -- is
solved.

If anyone from Google is reading this, thank you!

~~~
statictype
In Mail.app on iOS you just have to tap the 'From' address and choose a
different one. What am I missing?

~~~
pud
Not exactly.

To send from a different 'From' in Mail.app, first you need to connect your
iPhone to additional email accounts (Settings->Mail). Then these addresses
will show up in your 'From' drop down.

But then you end up with multiple inboxes in your Mail.app. Which is messy,
fills up storage, and hurts my brain -- since I never need to check my other
inboxes (because all my email addresses forward to the same Gmail account).

With the Gmail iPhone app, I just need to prove once (in gmail.com) that I
have access to whatever 'From' addresss I want. Then I can select them in the
Gmail app.

Note: I admit that the viewport issues discussed in the blog post are indeed
an annoyance that I hope Google fixes soon. But I prefer Gmail app to Mail.app
nonetheless.

~~~
chmars
To send from different mail addresses in Mail.app for iOS with only one inbox,
you can add your additional mail addresses to your default mail address in the
mail configuration by separating them with commas:

default@example.com, additional1@example.com, additional2@example.com, etc.

The same trick works for the OS X version of Mail.app

~~~
josephlord
Thanks! I upvoted you because this was really good news for me.

On the iPhone (but not the iPad) I think you have to write this somewhere else
and paste it in because I can't find a comma on the keyboard when editing that
text field!

~~~
chmars
You are right, I have never actually entered my additional mail addresses into
that text field but prepared the string in a text editor and copied it
afterwards.

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dguido
Disagree. The reason that Gmail for iOS and Gmail in general suck is the total
lack of support for cryptography within the application (S/MIME, PGP, or other
solutions).

As a friend of mine said, "Gmail -- a private conversation between you, me,
and 25,000 SREs."

~~~
packetslave
Funny, but not necessarily true. Poking around in someone's personal data is a
really, REALLY good way to get fired immediately.

~~~
Firehed
_getting caught_ poking around in someone's personal data is a great way to
get fired ;)

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jes5199
Basically all of iOS has the tiny-text problem (on iPhone, at least) - both
Safari and Chrome have zoom that doesn't reflow text, so you either have to
read something tiny or frantically scroll left and right to read each line. It
gives me a headache, and this is the first thing that's made me think about
switching back to Android.

~~~
drivebyacct2
>both Safari and Chrome have zoom that doesn't reflow text

 _What?!_ (That doesn't seem right...?)

~~~
eclipxe
It's not right, but it's true. No reflow on zoom in the iOS browser or
WebViews

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wheels
It mentions @media queries working in the iOS Mail app, but as best as I've
been able to decipher, they're still fairly broken (whereas Android's Mail app
and K-9 aren't).

Specifically, it always reports that the mail is in landscape mode (even in
the default portrait) and doesn't set max-width to a larger value when in
landscape mode, making it (again, as far as I've been able to figure out)
impossible to create different HTML mail layouts for landscape and portrait
modes.

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yskchu
They should make it more like the Android version, that one is awesome.

~~~
werid
i don't know about that. i often get html-emails from companies which don't
fit the screen. sometimes i can align it by adjusting to the left... shouldn't
have to.

~~~
drivebyacct2
The new Gmail update included Pinch-to-Zoom. Check it out in the Settings.
Works perfectly, solves this problem quite nicely.

~~~
CervezaPorFavor
Tip: after zooming in, double-tap the text to reflow it.

~~~
spot
aaahhhh thank you!

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cstross
Point of note: the pinch-to-zoom failure to wrap text to the viewport is
_also_ a feature of some Apple apps -- notably Pages, which is very pretty on
the iPhone but fundamentally Not Fit For Purpose as a word processor on those
devices, unless you habitually write text in a column 5cm wide.

Pages is fine on the iPad's larger screen, which can scale to display a US
letter or A4 page reasonably clearly.

I suspect the root of the problem is a misplaced prioritization of
presentation over content. Probably the right thing to do with graphics, but a
really bad idea when handling text-based documents.

------
shocks
Gmail app, both iOS and Android is full of fail. Too much "clean design" -
aka, flat featureless grey on white boxes with icons that mean very little. I
hate this new 'minimal' design craze.

~~~
rplnt
Google Apps on my Android always were always one of the worst.

Google Maps - resource hungry, always doing something in the background, slow
.. replaced them with much better, unfortunately local, alternative

Google Play - two examples: doesn't prevent phone from losing network so I
have to play with the phone in order to download updates; listing my
applications always takes about half a minute.. even if I did the same task 5
seconds ago

Google+ - basically unusable, unbearably slow, doing stuff in background all
the time, crashed whole system few times

The truth is I don't have the most modern phone, but it isn't the slowest
either (it's single core 900MHz w/ 512MB ram). It's running on the latest
available android for that device (the device was sold less then a year ago,
it's from 2010). Can't imagine how those apps run on older/slower phones.

Side note: Another multi-billion dollar company that can't seem to produce
working android application is facebook. That is the single worst application
that I have ever used (some were worse (google+), but I can't really talk
about "usage" with them). It's getting slowly better, but it's still a crap.
Twitter on the other hand is great.

~~~
mrcrassic
Not to be rude, but most apps on the Play Store are going to run slow with
those specs, especially if it's running on a more current version of Android
than it was designed for. My G2 used to be blazing fast when it came out two
years ago. I wouldn't even dare attempt running anything on that thing now.

Personally, I've found Google's Apps to work the best and look the best...on
modern devices.

~~~
rplnt
I understand that general developer doesn't care about part of the users if it
would require the extra mile of work. But Google?

------
planetjones
It lasted until morning, before I deleted it. While I like the UI to look at,
it's not conducive to getting things done.

And I made the mistake of enabling push notifications - only to find my phone
covered in notifications when I woke up - I know Google don't really have a
better way of doing this due to iOS... but it does beg the question why
bother, when you can't better what is already available?

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te_entrepreneur
I filter all my addresses to Gmail on my iPhone 5 and it is amazing. I can
send from any address as well, which is nice b/c I have about 10 different
ones for various businesses. It works well and is easy for me. The Gmail app
is essential in my opinion.

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soyelmango
I love the app, but there is one thing I'd change to perfect it, because I'm a
heavy label user:

When choosing a label, there's no immediate visual feedback to show which
label you've selected. This might not sound critical, but using a finger on a
moving train can lead to inaccurate pressing! Compare that to the web
interface: select a label, and there's immediate feedback saying "this
conversation has been moved to/labelled "whatever_the_label_is".

I'd like to either see my selection invert, or a confirmation similar to the
web interface.

(And agree with the OP: taking up valuable screen space with a thick border is
inefficient).

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dangson
The subject line and contact info also take up a lot of vertical space. The
actual content of the email doesn't start until halfway down the screen.
Compare this to iOS Mail where the content starts about 20% down (the contact
details are hidden until you click Details).

If the author weren't using an iPhone 5 with the longer screen, the first
paragraph of the email would barely be visible.

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ameen
Used it on my iPad yesterday, and did notice the less-than desirable viewport
width. Google seems to have been inspired by webOS's Mail app, but has
forgotten that the quick-view could be expanded by pushing the inbox view away
so that only the message is in full view.

Also, the grey borders are just a case of prioritizing form over function.

~~~
ooobo
Just testing on my phone, I get the feeling the newsletter this OP has
screenshotted has set it's own padding/margins as well, exacerbating the
problem. Still, it should have been quite clear when they were designing it
that two margins for a 240px width screen is overkill.

However, the inbox screen isn't so spaced out, and relatively condensed.
Thankfully

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john626
This just shows how you must always optimize the UI for the primary task. It
is never acceptable to compromise usability to improve style.

On small devices screen real estate is premium, so don't waste it with margins
like this. Though I have to say the design looks nice, too bad it wastes so
much space.

------
jaman1020
The problem with apps that have stock Apple alternatives is that they always
feel second fiddle to the OS. Even apps with tons of better features (reminder
apps come to mind) often don't offer the same seamless worry-free integration
of relatively bare-bones apps like Reminders

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alayne
I've been pretty happy using Mail with GMail set up as an Exchange host in
order to get push. I am glad that Google is putting effort into their client.
I couldn't figure out how to get the new Gmail to do a real delete instead of
an archive.

~~~
neotek
Head over to <http://m.google.com/sync> on your phone and you can change the
settings to allow proper deletion.

~~~
brown9-2
Yup, this is the solution, as weird as it seems to have to go to a Google
preferences page to control delete behavior in the iOS mail app.

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MagnitudeSw
Totally agree on the text zoom. I like that the iOS app has text under the
icons. On gmail web they don't and I have to think a bit before I click an
icon. I feel the earlier versions of web gmail were much more intuitive.

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w1ntermute
_The Verge_ had some criticisms about the app as well:
[http://www.theverge.com/2012/12/4/3728548/gmail-2-0-ios-
hand...](http://www.theverge.com/2012/12/4/3728548/gmail-2-0-ios-hands-on)

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anatari
Another thing that is annoying about it is the fuzzy text when you zoom in.
They must be using web views in a non standard way because the built in HTML
viewer usually re-renders text as you zoom.

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kidh0
I think that the main problem in the Gmail for iOS is that I can't configure
the refresh time. For people who receive lots of e-mails it drains the battery
so bad that it last only half a day.

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meerita
Actually, after 20 mins of use I found it incredibly uncomfortable. I still
don't know why they didn't just continue with the fabulous Sparrow client. I'm
going back to Sparrow right now.

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kcon
Am I correct in saying that this is using the technology Google acquired from
Sparrow? The swipe-left bar in particular looks very much like the swipe-left
bar in Sparrow.

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cupcake-unicorn
Hah, in my opinion, Gmail for _Android_ still sucks. This is on 2.3 though, so
I may be lacking some of the features.

~~~
eclipxe
You are. Pinch to zoom was just launched in 4.2 which I believe is only
available for ICS and above.

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yottoy
Still so pretty...

/me runs

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j0j0r0
a second reason, because it's iOS.

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drivebyacct2
Jeez it is a smack in the face to scroll down and see the iOS Mail app after
the beautiful Gmail app.

~~~
shinratdr
What is beautiful about the Gmail app? All the grey? I'm all for clean design
but I don't exactly see how it's cleaner or nicer than Mail.app.

~~~
emehrkay
I use my nexus and the constant grey puts me off. Very little contrast, very
little distinction between what is UI and what is scaffolding. If you're going
to do a flat design, the elements have to separate themselves from one another
-- things have to be distinct. This is a great example of a flat email
interface with basically the same layout as Google's client:
<http://www.vanschneider.com/work/mail/> everything being #cecece and shifted
one direction or the other isn't.

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aj
Because it is Gmail?

