Less than a month after the iOS release, Yahoo today updated its Yahoo Mail app for Android with a slew of non-email features. You can download the new version now directly from Google Play.
Similar to the iOS update, the new Android app no longer only shows your Yahoo Mail inbox. It includes a new top bar with icons for Mail, All Stories, and Today (the iOS version uses a bottom bar instead). Nothing has changed in the first tab.
The second tab has a “personalized, visually rich news stream” that shows everything from “celebrity gossip to the latest political news.” The third tab meanwhile displays the local weather, sports scores, news headlines (yes, again), as well as popular photos and videos via Flickr.
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Yahoo says it did take the time to include “a couple of features that are unique to Android.” Unfortunately, the company didn’t reveal much, other than saying users can simply swipe left or right to move between the three tabs.
Here’s the full Yahoo Mail 4.0.2 for Android changelog:
- Big update! Yahoo Mail app is now enhanced with news, search, and snapshots of today’s weather, sports scores, popular videos, News Digest and more. Get the info you need, all in one convenient app. (Note: these changes will be rolling out to Android phones over the next few weeks).
- Performance and stability improvements.
- Bug fixes.
The note in first point is worth emphasizing. The Yahoo blog post says News and Today will be rolling out to all supported devices “over the next few days” while the changelog says “weeks.” We assume the changelog is a bit outdated.
As we noted last month, the new features seem like a very basic version of what Google Now and Microsoft’s Bing offer, and they’re limited to just the US. Again, Yahoo hasn’t offered much of an explanation as to why it is bundling all these features into Yahoo Mail rather than Yahoo Search, aside from the fact the former has a larger userbase.
Top Image Credit: David Paul Morris/Getty Images
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