Gmail for iPad Review

A wave of cheer spread through the iOS user community when the official Gmail app was finally released on November 2. This was met shortly thereafter with a loud cry as the app was pulled from the App Store within hours. Why? Due to a broken notification system…which should imply that this new release should boast a solid notification system. Does it? Read ahead to find out.

The Gmail app is a nice attempt at creating a fully-featured mail application that is native to iOS. It features a user interface that's pleasant and reminiscent of the Facebook app, with a collapsible menu that appears on the left pane. It provides access to your starred messages, sent mail, drafts, labeled messages, trash, spam folders, and more quite efficiently. Messages appear in a large format on the right side of the screen which provides for a pleasant read when viewed on the iPad's stunning display. The bottom pane provides quick access to a help page, buttons to help you navigate back and forth between messages, and a sign out button which enables you to sign into your other Gmail accounts (but you most log out and back in first).

As Raymond mentioned in his Gmail preview, the app has more accurate touch points than the web-based version, which create a snappy and responsive user experience. Within a threaded message, user's names appear in different colors -- a nice touch to enhance message tracking. When you receive a new message, it appears in bold black text in your inbox until you read it. Then, the text switches to a medium shade of grey, basically “dimming” the previously accessed message. Again, this is another nice visual touch making browsing more efficient. Its search feature is better than that of the Mail app because it enables you to search your many folders and not only the one that's open when you decided to search. This is a time-saving feature that may sway many to use this app despite its limitations.

Additionally, the app enables you to receive notifications for new messages, use the priority inbox features of Gmail, and provides auto-completion of names as you type. Attachments are simple and a breeze, which is truly a step up from using Mail. While these features are certainly useful to many users, they are perhaps some of the only reasons someone may choose the Gmail app over the Mail app.

On the contrary, there are many reasons why this app disappoints. In addition to not providing support for multiple accounts, the Gmail app fails because it can be sluggish and provides unreliable push notifications, making push notifications entirely useless. It fails to provide support for iOS 5's notification center and overall behaves much like an enhanced version of the Gmail web app which is acceptable (I guess) but also rather disappointing. Coming from the innovative minds at Google, the app feels far too rushed and I feel they could have implemented it in a much better manner.

In the time I spent using it, I experienced session timeouts and grew frustrated with the inability to seamlessly switch between my various Gmail accounts. After having taken so long to release a native app, I expected that the developers would have incorporated this feature. I hope that this is rectified soon in an upcoming release, but for now, it's a strong deterrent from my use of this app over the Mail app. Upon login, I was not pleased that I was taken to the web-based login screen which was a sign of what was to follow. As a matter of fact, the entire app feels like a glorified web app which is less than ideal. Also, the lack of an offline mode leaves more to be desired, especially for the iPad user constrained to a 16 GB device.

If you’re determining whether to use this or stick the Mail app, I hope this article will help you make a more informed decision. Stay tuned to see if we have updates that will make this app a more solid one than it is in its current iteration. For now, the Google's iOS debut for Gmail is hard to recommend.