Inbox for Gmail: hands-on and first impressions

Google this afternoon announced Inbox for Gmail, its all-new emailing solution that is intended to coexist with the regular Gmail platform. Inbox for Gmail is available on an invite only basis for Android, iOS and Chrome. I am fortunate enough to have received an invite to Inbox for Gmail, and I have been giving the iPhone app a rundown to see how it works. For the most part, Inbox is everything that you know and love about Gmail in a sleeker package.

For those that have a love-hate relationship with email, which is probably just about everyone, Inbox has a more organized and intuitive user interface for achieving the elusive “Inbox Zero.” Inbox enables users to add their own reminders to the top of the inbox, can snooze away messages to be shown again at a later time and highlights important parts of emails like YouTube videos, PDFs and Microsoft Office documents, flight statuses and package deliveries.

The main Inbox view provides an overall look at your emails categorized into bundles including travel, purchases, finance, social, updates, forums and promos. If you use tabs on the desktop version of Gmail, then this will be a familiar experience. There are also unbundled sections for low priority or for any custom inboxes that you may have created. Overall, the organizational functionality of Inbox is fantastic.

There are two additional views for “Snoozed” and “Done.” The former houses all of your emails until a specific date and time that you choose for the message to return to your main inbox, so that you can have a cleaner look at the emails that matter to you most straight after opening the app. All emails placed in Done are also removed from the main inbox, although they do not return at a later date unless you tap the pin icon.

Overall, Inbox is essentially a marriage between Gmail and Google Now. This is email built for the modern day person, the individual that wants to be able to organize and manage his or her inbox on the fly as efficiently as possible. Inbox for iPhone has a sleek design that mirrors Material Design on Android, and we’ll be sure to share a more in-depth look at the app in the near future.