Incoming: A Native Gmail iPhone App. Finally. | Hacker News Reader

Incoming: A Native Gmail iPhone App. Finally.

parislemon.com

118 pointssahillavingia65 comments

But the issue is the deep integration. If I choose to send an email in iOS, will it send me to this gmail app or will it to send me to Mail?

It's the same issue with Google Voice.

Sure, that's a big issue. But it might not be as bad as it seems. The reason a native Gmail app is such great news is because of the special way in which we read and organize our Gmail accounts: Priority Inbox, tags rather than folders, stars, etc.

There will probably be nothing special about the native app's compose interface, though, so I don't see that it will be a problem to keep the account registered in both clients, but only to sync regularly with the native Gmail app, and to use whatever app iOS picks (undoubtedly MobileMail.app) when composing.

It's an inherent issue with iOS, and one that would take a major update to solve (in other words, don't hold your breath until iOS6 or 7). Android solves it using a system of "Intents," where you basically just broadcast a message to the system saying, hey, I want to open this kind of file or do this kind of general action. Any app can register themselves as a receiver of a type of Intent. When there is a conflict (multiple apps can potentially handle the same Intent request) the user is given a small dialog window to choose what to open, along with an option to make that one the default.

Intents is probably one of my single favorite under the hood features of Android as a user. Installing an app and having it instantly be able to exchange data with any other app on the system in a smart way makes the process so simple you don't really even have to think about it. It's one of the parts of Android I'd have a hard time living without.

It's also what makes the OS-level back button so important, which full-time iOS users seem not to understand when they cursorily try an Android phone. (http://daringfireball.net/linked/2011/10/31/android-hardware)

I agree with this thread that this is one of the best things about Android.

In fairness, I do agree with Gruber that back button behavior on Android can be painfully inconsistent. That said, I also agree with you that it provides fairly important functionality on Android. I do wish developers would use it more consistently.

Assuming enough of the OS X underpinning is still present in iOS, this would be trivial to implement--it's just a matter of Apple deciding to expose the event handling stuff in a public API. (I'm not sure how it works currently in OS X--last time I looked into it, it was still a descendant of the OS 9 "Internet" control panel, only without any UI at all....)

I just happened to download the Google+ native app today for the first time. It is terrible.

Hopefully the gmail app will not follow suit.

I guess you haven't used the Android one then.

Not really relevant given this discussion is around Google apps on iOS.

Google+ for Android just got a pretty major revamp. It has improved significantly.

Is it still like 12MB? EDIT: Looks like it's much smaller now, about 7.5MB.

It is noticeably more performant as well.

But lost the widget, apparently.

It depends how they implement it. Google Voice app for iPhone is not that great. Can't copy paste a phone number & if you put app in background, it erases the number.

I wonder how they implement multiple Google accounts (multiple Google logins is a mess in the browser). That being said, I like the mobile version of gmail.com

Why is an extra app necessary? Is this only about bringing a different UI to the table compared to the default Mail app? What am I missing?

As someone who used Android (with GMail) for a few years and recently switched to iPhone, it's painful to lose archiving, labels, starring, priority inbox, complete thread history and a good search. Additionally, the UI for threading GMail has is much better than the native app.

(Mail allows you to archive. Starring works, too. Labels map to folders, depending on how you use them that might be good enough or not. Search is pretty great with iOS5, not sure what Gmail is doing better there. From what I remember Gmail’s search has always been pretty horrible. Maybe that has changed.)

I can understand why you might want the priority inbox. That, however, doesn’t seem like a very big deal to me.

There's a difference between being able to do something, and being able to do it with one click.

That depends on how exactly you use something, does it not? If you rarely use something but it takes up space all the time then that’s a problem, especially on a phone.

While you're asserting that it's not so useful to you, at the same time you're hinting at why others may appreciate it (if they use it frequently).

Search is great with iOS for the messages you already have, but it doesn't work at all for "continue search on the server". If the Gmail app fixes that, it's a major feature.

“Continue search on server” works for me, although it is slow and the UI is clunky: I have to first navigate to the All Mail, then search for something, then click “Continue search”. I’m sure this would be much easier in a native Gmail app for iOS.

Starring works? I don't think opening a message and then moving it to the "starred" folder works. The android app allows you to star directly from the message list.

The great thing is that if people want a minimal mail app, Mail will be their choice. I just want a choice that allows me to use my preferred workflow.

It didn’t work before iOS5. Now you can flag emails directly – which in turn stars them.

Don't forget attachments, for me it's a real dealbreaker that you can't attach files to an email message on iOS (due to the security model limitations). Unfortunately a native app isn't going to solve this.

Of course you can attach files, but you need to do it from the app that contains the file.

The Android app has its own fair share of troubles though. It's not very good in actually receiving the email. The email it gets is fine, otherwise though it has to "sync" everything. I can't just turn on email syncing and get my emails in a PUSH way, it's still delayed. When I press update it generally takes 1-2 minutes over 3G to actually update.

Check, if the Settings | Accounts and Sync | your gmail account | Sync Gmail setting is turned on. If it is, the Android app has no problem with push email. It has worked for me since G1.

I'm so dependent on Gmail-specific features that aren't in The mail app that I use the Gmail mobile web interface exclusively, despite the drastically decreased responsiveness from using a web app. This will be a breath of fresh air.

Such as? (honest qusetion)

Priority inbox, stars etc

Labeling, search, archive vs. delete.

What I gleaned from the article is that the author wants push notifications from gmail. That doesn't appeal to me, email is not a phonecall. It shouldn't be disruptive. I want to get emails when I have time to check them.

You can already get push notifications (via mail) - http://www.google.com/mobile/sync/.

I have not figured out how to sync my calendar and contacts in sync with iCloud and Google. Hopefully this app will solve that problem.

You need to set up your gmail account as an Exchange account. I do this and it syncs everything like it did for me on Android.

I just wish Google would start building universal apps for iOS. Their apps on iPhone aren't really all that great, and when you add that to the fact that they seem to be ignoring the iPad, it's just annoying.

The iPad is great for mail. A Gmail app built only for the iPhone form factor won't be at all useless, but it will be a disappointment.

Is it only for iPhone? I wish I had a native iPad gmail app. It would really cool. Certainly this would beat imap version.

I hope Google never forces users to switch to their "new look." I like it for their other services (Docs, Search), but for mail it looks so dull for some reason. Perhaps I'm also just really used to the "arcade" theme I've been using for 2 or 3 years.

Regardless, a mobile app will be nice to have since it will be optimized for Gmail (which is all I use, even for my own SMTP). I do get push notifications through the standard Mail app, though, so I'm not sure why that was a complaint.

Sparrow, the popular GMail desktop client, is said to be coming to iOS too.

source? I'd be very interested in hearing more about this.

http://m.readwriteweb.com/archives/sparrow_gmail_app_for_iph...

I think they can do better than Google's recent official app.

I agree that it's about time, but I think Apple beat them to it on push notifications. Gmail does work with iOS 5 notifications through the default mail app.

Only if you set it up as Exchange account.

Which heaven forbid you try syncing anything other than Mail. Contacts and Calendars have some very subtle bugs which snowball over time (and even on Google Premier Apps).

What bugs do you speak of? I've been syncing my contacts with Google and I haven't noticed anything gamebreaking.

The biggest one for me is that contact photos resize down to tiny thumbnails after any sync with Google Contacts. There've been a thousand complaints in Google forums for the last two years and it's still unfixed.

Google Contacts also uses a different set of field names, and will frequently sync "main" to "other", for instance. Or just mess up field formatting, or break gtalk ids...

Yep, I can confirm dealing with these issues for years myself as well.

As soon as iCloud was released, I happily ported over my contacts. It's been a much better experience so far (I can finally use large contact photos!).

I thought about doing this. Do you store the canonical versions in iCloud and push them Google or have you just left Google behind? How did you go about setting it up?

One that I have noticed is that "Continue search on server" doesnt work.

That is my biggest peeve about Mail.app with gmail

Much rather have a native Google Talk app on iOS than Gmail. The selection of IM apps currently on iOS are far from perfect.

Awesome, really the only thing that I missed on my Android phone. Now just need a native gmaps app with navigation.

If this is true and it's as good as it could be then it might just replace MobileMail.app on my iPhone dock...

How much you wanna bet you won't be able to use it with Google Apps (the paid accounts)?

I don't know about the paid accounts, but my free account works fine on my Android. I don't see why the native app shouldn't work fine for Apps accounts on iOS.

The iOS mail app works fine with gmail. What's the fuss?

I'd kill for a mail app that properly handles my Gmail labels.

Thanks to google and apple if this is true!

The Android app is REALLY crap. It does not sync so it is practically useless. Unfortunately, Google ignores all pleas for bug fixes. Because "hey! it is free"

What I am saying is do not get excited about the iPhone GMail app.

it does sync; check your settings and check how much internal storage you have

What phone are you using? I use a Samsung Galaxy S I9003, and when I set up account sync, it starts a background service for syncing my gmail and google apps accounts, and is syncs and notifies just fine regardless of whether I have the mail app running in background(I generally don't since notification works without leaving it running).

Either you are using an older software, or you haven't enabled sync.

It sync since 1.0; three years ago I used it with G1 and it worked fine. There is no older version, that was made public.

GP has either disabled sync, or is trolling.

I am using a HTC ChaCha. Before this I was using the Milestone. It is a huge problem.

To the down-voters, pay a visit to the App Store and see the reviews.

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