Gmail Inbox, a UI upgrade for Gmail?
Inbox by Gmail has been around for quite a while. But is it really worth upgrading your default Gmail app to inbox?
For a longtime Gmail users have been demanding for a Material Design UI upgrade. Google instead launched another of it’s product, the Inbox. The app supports both Android/IOS app and website. Both follow Material Design UI strictly. They put a lot of effort in bringing out the final product. One doesn't need a new account, just one-time sign-in from your google account into Inbox account will make inbox as your default mail app*. Let’s explore the key features and UI elements of inbox.
Snooze feature : The much needed feature for very long time. Often mails are forgotten once read. But this feature enables you to set a snooze to your requirement. Also there is provision for random snooze. Internally, the app might study your notifications routine and alert you effectively. A descent upgrade from the reminder feature!
Done feature : The app makes sure that you read all your mails. Once you read the mail you can mark it as “done”. But seems like a ripoff from the Whatsapp blue ticks feature except that you manually mark its as done. All the marked mails go to the Done section. However the actual purpose of this feature isn’t showcased. If you’re a person who gets mail on irregular basis or in very small numbers, you will appreciate it. But ideally people get loads of mail every day and wouldn’t care to move them to Done section. More like a pseudo bin?
Bundled section : This section is pretty impressive! The application processes all the mails and makes it handy for you to read your transactions or purchases or even your flight details. The much appealing feature is that it directly displays images and docs without even actually opening the mail. The finance section categories all your payment mails so that in one click your can view without having to search for your recent transactions.
In the Gmail app the sender is the main header for the mail content. But in Inbox, mail’s subject is given priority over the sender. This affects a lot on the user’s view and it urges one to read it’s contents, probably the most anticipated feature. Visually makes sense as the content is prioritized. Also icons loaded(Facebook, YouTube, etc.) from the sender is a very nice feature. Thumbs up for these!
View optimization : The contents of the mail irrespective of the sender will be optimized into material design to nudge it well. This is very helpful if when mails received are from a non-google source which don’t have proper adjustment of the contents. Thumbs up for these too!
All the other classification of the mails is exactly the same from the original Gmail app: Personal, travel, work, social, updates, forums, promos and spam.
So is the app just about these new feature?
Well, the android Inbox app has been aesthetically improve compared to Gmail app. However not as much as expected. The color combinations for the feature has taken deviation from the ideal Material UI. The main blue color of the UI(#4285f4 light blue) seems to be fine. But the color switch that happens on moving to a new section doesn't actually blend well with the Material rules. The ripple effect brings out a whole new color which should have ideally been a variant of the same color. For both the web and android version it is a little annoying. Generally google products abide by the theme color and maintain the design even throughout. But this feature makes it odd from the home of google products.
Major flaws!
The app needs a few improvements and over iterations will get better.
1. Search bar : Mostly the search bar click leads to the toggle of pin button accidently, which activates the pinned mails rather than search bar expanding.
2. The website version is lot more buggy that the android one. On clicking the mail, the mail expands and shows the content which is very nice visually. However it’s implementation is not so appealing. Even in the android app it takes a few moment to load the contents. The android app makes a new overlay on the current content and makes it harder to load the new content. But this gets worse in the desktop version. The mail expands but not all the contents are visible at one shot even if the mail is shorter. If you click on the mail at the bottom of the page it scrolls the mail to the center of the screen and expands, which keeps cracking if your internet speed is medium/below average. Its just not implemented that well.
3. You can’t change the theme. Gmail was popular for its theme change option. But unfortunately themes cannot be customized in inbox.
4. If your internet is off, sometimes the app shows mails that you have viewed it longtime ago which creates an impression that all the new ones got deleted.
Personally the app isn’t an major upgrade from Gmail but the UI has improve enormously. In time it will get even better. I would love to see the tabs feature(like in Whatsapp) for easy access of categories. I miss the star feature in the list though. A little less padding of the list view could enable a lot more mails and content visible in one shot. The backend of the app is excellent but fails to perform in handling the UI elements well. I highly recommend this app who receive mails on hourly basis or mails of wide varieties.
Overall a 3.75/5 :)
Link : https://inbox.google.com
The review is based on tests on Android 6.1 and desktop Google Chorme/Microsoft Edge.
