Thoughts on GMail for iOS

The GMail iOS app has gotten a bad rap, mainly for its initial release bugs that prompted Google to remove it from the App Store and re-release it two weeks later, the lack of genuine push notifications and the lack of multiple (simultaneous) account support. However, as an avid GMail user who is used to and who loves the GMail web experience, this app is right up my alley.

While the native iOS Mail app is a great app, I find myself not using it now that I have the Gmail iOS app. Here’s why:

• The conversations in the GMail iOS app are actually threaded and work like they do in the GMail web app.
• The search functionality in the GMail iOS app is much better than it is in the native iOS Mail app.
• When composing an email, the GMail iOS app allows me to utilize the contacts in my iOS address book as well as my contacts stored within GMail itself. The native iOS Mail app does not allow for this. For me, this is a huge deal breaker for the native iOS Mail app. While there is some overlap between my iOS address book and my GMail contacts, I have many more Gmail contacts.
• I realize that this is somewhat subjective, but I feel that the iOS GMail app’s user interface is more elegant than the native iOS Mail app. I like the way that the read messages in Gmail’s app are a lighter shade than those that are not yet read. After using the GMail app for a while and then going back to the native iOS Mail app, I found the iOS native interface to be more clunky, less intuitive. I really don’t like the way conversations are displayed in the native iOS Mail app.
• I only use GMail and primarily only use one account for my day to day emails. The lack of simultaneous accounts does not bother me.

There is one thing that I find lacking about the GMail iOS app, and that is the lack of a “delete all” feature. While I rarely delete everything in my inbox all at once (I frequently select multiple items and move them into the trash), I would really like a “delete all” button in the trash folder so that I can easily remove everything in the trash without having to select the emails one by one. This goes for the Spam folder as well.