Google on Monday announced an update to its Gmail mobile Web app and Gmail Offline. The company says the new release is available to Android, BlackBerry, iOS, and Kindle Fire users; you can try it out yourself now by simply navigating to gmail.com in the browser on your corresponding device.
Check out how the new mobile site looks:
The Offline app for Chrome meanwhile hasn’t been updated in the Chrome Web Store. We’ll post a screenshot once it is, assuming it’s significantly different than what you can see above (we doubt it will be).
Google doesn’t have a detailed changelog of what exactly has been revamped, but it did reference the rebooted Gmail app for iPhone and iPad that arrived in December 2012. The company says many iOS users told the company they “like the redesigned UI, along with new features such as improved search and integration with Google Calendar.”
This led Google to roll out “a similar refreshed” that includes “many of these same changes.” As we noted three months ago, the new look is quite likely the work of the Sparrow team, which Google acquired back in July 2012.
At the time, our own Matthew Panzarino described it as such:
The new design is clean, instantly recognizable as Google, but also infinitely better than the last version of the app. I’ve been playing with it for just a few minutes and I already like it a lot.
While Google has been getting better and better at designing mobile apps, the company ultimately still wants to push the (mobile) Web forward. It’s thus not surprising that the mobile version of Gmail has been refreshed: not only can iOS users access the new design, but so can Android, BlackBerry, and Kindle Fire users.
The obvious missing platform here is Windows Phone. Given Google’s ongoing feud with its rival, we’re not surprised the company left out Microsoft’s mobile platform. That being said, it’s still sad to see, as the mobile version of Internet Explorer is a very capable browser.
See also – Google finds its design voice on iOS and Gmail for iOS updated with multiple account support, new design, infinite scrolling inbox and more
Image credit: AFP/Getty Images
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