improvements

As expected, Google just started rolling out its brand new inbox to iOS users after first introducing us to the new category-based design last week. While its not a tabbed design like on the desktop, much like the Android app that just started rolling out iOS users can now access the new feature that groups emails into separate inboxes by selecting categories from the app’s side navigation bar.

 Meet the new inbox: If you’ve enabled the new inbox, your mail is now grouped into categories so that you can see what’s new at a glance and decide which emails you want to read when. Primary mail is shown first and it’s easy to access and keep track of email in other categories by opening the menu. Configure this feature by going to Gmail.com on your computer.

Today’s Gmail update also brings improved notifications allowing you to customize what emails you receive notifications for:
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Google announced today on its Official Gmail Blog that it has released an update to the Android app for Gmail that brings new features, faster search, and other enhancements for certain users. Perhaps the most notable new feature is the ability to reply, archive, and delete from notifications with one tap—rather than having to open the app to sort and reply to mail:

You can combine this with existing notification features like the ability to customize which messages you receive notifications for and set up different sounds for individual labels. So if you filter and label all the messages from your mom, you could set a ringtone to let you know you received a new mail from her and then quickly reply (because we know what can happen when you ignore your mother!).

The feature is available to users running Android 4.1 and up, but Google is also rolling out faster search, bug fixes, and performance enhancements for Android 4.0 and up. Users on Android 2.2 and up will now have access to a “New Labels API for 3rd-party app developers” and the usual performance improvements.

The updated Gmail app for Android is available from Google Play now. 
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[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N8gvHaX1cwY&]
Have Google+ notifications been unreliable on your Android device? Thanks to a rather hefty update to the Android app last night, Google has now introduced much needed “improved notifications reliability”, among the other dozen or so improvements and fixes included in the update.

Version 1.0.5 of the Google+ app for Android includes some of the enhancements made to the browser version of the service such as grouping new Circle related notifications together, rather than bombarding your notifications bar with each new addition.

The notifications system is said to be more reliable in this latest update, but whether or not it will cure issues users are having with infrequent, outdated, and often non-existent notifications is yet to be seen. Even if you haven’t experienced these issues, we recommend dropping by the Market now and grabbing the 1.0.5 update to take advantage of the other handful of welcomed fixes listed below.

What’s in this version:

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