

A more modern Gmail app for Android - CaRDiaK
http://gmailblog.blogspot.com/2014/11/a-more-modern-gmail-app-for-android.html

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simonsarris
Very clean. A lot more stuff is "sized" consistently compared to the current
Gmail on Android, which makes it look a lot more professional to me. If your
interface is clean enough, you shouldn't have to break things up by changing
the spacing/sizing/capital-case of the elements, like the current app does.
This is a nice iteration.

I'm happy about these recent app developments but all I really want for
Christmas is a marginally newer Google Finance. It's been like ten years. The
webapp still uses _Flash._

~~~
pbreit
I'm getting a little nervous that Google's apps are moving away from compact
data presentation.

For me, the poor use of screen real estate was the showstopper for Inbox.

I realize I may have different tastes in which case I think the "Display
Density" is an OK compromise (despite that the default is all that usually
really matters).

~~~
Touche
Meanwhile K9 is still the best mail client on Android, works fine with any
IMAP mail host.

~~~
jordanthoms
K9's interface is still awful.

~~~
e12e
Yeah, as far as I've managed to figure out, there are no good mail clients for
Android, but k9 is the least bad.

~~~
antihero
I've found the one that works best for random IMAP e-mail account is
CloudMagic.

~~~
e12e
Looks like they touch upon a few of the same interface ideas as I've been
playing with (including using a smarter client-server protocol than IMAP) -
but as I want to host my own mail, they're out (I can't host the cloud part on
my own server(s)/cloud).

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politician
It's nice. I just hope the email monetization features -- Social, Promos,
Purchase Intent, Ads, Buy Stuff Now -- aren't as prominent as in Inbox.

Of course, they used to let us disable them (in the desktop site). Now they're
a key feature. That's progress, I guess.

~~~
danieldk
_Of course, they used to let us disable them (in the desktop site). Now they
're a key feature. That's progress, I guess._

They are not mandatory in the new Gmail app. I have been using a build of 5.0
for the last few days, and it provides a normal inbox as all previous
versions.

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bithush
I recently moved away from Gmail because of the lack of push (via EAS) on non-
Android devices. When Apple (iCloud) and MS (Outlook.com) offer push via EAS
it annoys me Google killed it off unless you pay.

Interestingly moving away from Gmail took me totally out of the Google world.
I just switched to an iPhone from a Nexus 5 as the Nexus 6 was just too big
and I have very happy using no Google account/services (outside of search).

I wanted to try Inbox and got an invite on day 1 but have not bothered to try
it yet as it would mean using Gmail again.

Google bring back free EAS please!

Also it always annoyed me how on Android they have two email apps, one for
Gmail and one for other Email. Crappy experience really. The Gmail app should
support other providers. I know it is coming soon but it should have from day
one to be honest.

~~~
dozy
Doesn't the Gmail app on iOS use a push-system for delivery? Why would you
_want_ to use EAS for Gmail? Seems reasonably (and positively Apple-like) for
Google to push people into the Gmail app where they control the experience and
can surface first-party Gmail paradigms more readily.

Admittedly I'm an Android user with limit experience with stock iOS mail app.
Is the iOS mail app really that much better than the Gmail app?

~~~
evilduck
Gmail.app for iOS is incredibly sluggish (on my 5S) while Android's version on
my Moto G is pretty snappy, so you're not experiencing the same thing at all.

I run both Mail.app and Gmail.app on my iPhone because I'll often get the push
notification for Gmail.app, tap the notification to open the email, get
frustrated and tired waiting for it to load and just go manually refresh
Mail.app and see it almost instantly.

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mmanfrin
I don't understand why Google is pushing two different email clients as the
'main' email clients for users of its phones.

~~~
kingnight
I would have totally jumped to Inbox but it seems there is no way to mark an
email as 'read' without having to actually open it. It's kind of
flabbergasting and seems very limiting to me.

It definitely feels like a bit push for 'lock in' (not that gmail really needs
that...).

If I am wrong, someone please tell me how to do so from a list view.

~~~
snogglethorpe
Also, from what I hear (I'm not allowed to use it yet), Inbox doesn't let you
use labels like labels (multiple labels per message etc), but tries to enforce
a "folder-like" view...

[A horrible mistake if it's true... Labels are a significant advantage of
gmail over many other email clients.]

~~~
tonfa
Can't an email be in multiple clusters?

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pranjalv123
If I use the IMAP feature, do all my non-gmail emails get sent to Google?

~~~
christop
I was worried about this as well, and there seems to be no clear answer
anywhere about this, but it appears not to work like the POP/IMAP fetching in
Gmail.

When I added my non-Gmail account to the app, I only saw traffic direct to the
IMAP server, and nothing to Google servers.

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buro9
They seem to have accidentally taken the soundtrack from a guitar lesson and
dropped it onto their Gmail video.

~~~
ProAm
That video was extremely painful to watch because of the music.

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mark_l_watson
It looks good but with the beta availability of InBox, I am not sure if I will
even try the new Gmail UI.

InBox is very nice, BTW. The web client is OK on my laptop, the iPad InBox app
is nice to use, and for me the Android InBox app is such a hugely better
experience than Gmail.

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dools
Can you turn off conversation view yet?

Conversation view is the single worst software feature ever developed for any
piece of software ever made.

Boy I wish I could turn it off in the android gmail client.

~~~
gareim
What do you not like about conversation view? As someone that's spent most of
his email life with it, I'm kinda curious of the other side.

~~~
jph00
I wasn't the person that made the claim - but since I feel the same way (well,
maybe not quite as strongly!)... I find I often lose track of earlier messages
in a thread that I haven't yet responded to, because I reply to some other
message from someone else who replied later. I also find that other people
make the same mistake and as a result fail to reply to my emails to them
sometimes.

I find emails much easier to deal with when the actual emails are in the list,
rather than the conversations - although when displaying the message there's
no reason not to show it in the context of the conversation.

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bluthru
So many horizontal bars. I wish that the top two bars could be unified and
shortened.

The bottom bar for only three androids buttons is a huge waste, but they've
painted themselves in a corner, there.

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conradfr
I hope you will finally be able to include images in a mail (like in the
desktop webapp) not just as an attached file, or maybe I just never found how
to do it in the current client ?

~~~
conradfr
self reply after getting the update : nope.

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smickie
Can anyone confirm or deny that this new Gmail supports media queries /
displays mobile emails?

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d0m
How can I get it? On the playstore it doesn't let me update it. Is it only for
newer devices?

~~~
christop
Like most Google apps, it's a staged rollout so you won't see it yet. It runs
on at least Android 4.0+.

You can download and install the latest version from here if you don't want to
wait: [http://www.apkmirror.com/apk/google-
inc/gmail/gmail-5-0-1556...](http://www.apkmirror.com/apk/google-
inc/gmail/gmail-5-0-1556543-apk/)

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AndrewDucker
Will I be able to turn conversation threading off?

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secfirstmd
Meh, come back to me when you have some decent support for security. Like an
easy PGP implementation

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danhsh
why is there two apps gmail and inbox for email both developed by google?

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dragonwriter
> why is there two apps gmail and inbox for email both developed by google?

Because one of the whole points of having service-based software is that you
can present different UIs on top of it for different audiences with the same
backend, and this is a realization of that ability.

Because Inbox is a fairly radical change with a strongly-opinionated workflow,
while Gmail is -- while still advancing -- a relatively conservative,
traditional email client. Having separate apps means people who are happy with
the basic Gmail app and fairly conservative (in terms of workflow)
improvements it gets are free to stick with it and not abandoned, while those
who have (the frequently cited) problems with classic email that Inbox is
designed to address can move to it and not be held back by the traditional
design of email clients.

~~~
danhsh
sounds reasonable, btw remind me of wave. Having used both, I fell back onto
gmail, as I still like the ordering of each individual email displayed in
front of me, instead of encapsulating them into categorizes which I need to
expand one by one to find the ones I am interested in.

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jsudhams
Looks like firefox-os email app on firefox phone

