Ondrej Holzman In recent days there have been rumors that Google is preparing a native iOS application for its mail, and yesterday it actually presented it. Its first official Gmail application appeared on the App Store, which is free and runs on iPhones and iPads. However, she is not as wonderful as everyone wished. At least not yet.
Basically, all Google did was take an already optimized web interface, add a few frills to it, and release it as an app for Apple devices. The Gmail application thus supports notifications, messages sorted into conversations or the so-called Priority Inbox, but compared to the web interface, it does not offer much more.
Although the native application does not lack automatic name completion or the integration of a built-in camera, we lack, for example, the ability to manage multiple accounts, which can be a major reason to say no to the official application and stay with Apple's Mail.app. Since it is more or less a port of the web interface, there is no option for any other settings either. The only thing you can do is to factory reset the app, which means that your account will be logged out.
The advantage over the web version of Gmail in the native application is at least that the interface is a bit more agile, but this is not the case everywhere. Many elements were not perfectly optimized.
For the time being, Gmail for iOS cannot by any chance satisfy demanding users of mailboxes who prefer a solution directly from Apple, and even average users will probably have no reason to switch. At least for now, the native Gmail app doesn't offer them anything extra.
And to make matters worse, Google had to pull its app from the App Store shortly after it was released because it contained a problem with receiving notifications. So, if you are among those for whom notifications do not work, wait for a new update.
When Google fixes the bug, you can Gmail again download from the App Store.
So I downloaded it, took a look and ... no really ... I don't see the reason ... Native mail is much better ... The only plus for the gmail app is the priority inbox, but I can live without it ... or. I only read new mail or write on my iPhone or iPad.
btw: I saw somewhere that a big plus for this application is supposed to be "direct push"... which is a bit silly, when push works luxuriously even through the IMAP / Exchange protocol directly in iOS.
Personally, I'm very disappointed and the inability to switch between multiple accounts is sending this app to the bottom for now :(
The term "native" means that it is programmed in objective-c, i.e. in the native language for iOS. This application is only a wrapper around WebView, so it is far from a native application.
Classic apple mail suits me. The only (quite significant) problem is searching in the post. This is desperate compared to gmail.
Hey, hey. If Apple had done a bit of work on this, there wouldn't be the slightest reason to look for an alternative.
I do not understand. Is it true that none of you on GMail use the archive and labels, which are missing the most in Apple's mail and which make the own GMail application mostly make sense?