A few days back, Google released a new app called Inbox for iOS and Android. I was fortunate enough to get an invite in the first batch. I requested for the invite from my iCloud mail and received the invite the next day on the same mail. And then I got into the problem in which I didn’t knew how the heck will I be claiming this invite, as I needed the invite-mail in my Gmail account to claim the invite, but it was in my iCloud mail. But then I re-read the mail and forwarded the mail to my Gmail address to make it work.
When I first launched the app, it looked just like the Gmail app with Material design makeover. But after exploring some more, I found that the app is totally different. It displays all your mails on the main screen. The mails are grouped by time. Attachments, photos, shipping information etc. are displayed inline with the mails so you can check the things that’s most relevant to you.
While viewing a mail, you get a pin button to pin the email, a snooze button and a tick button to archive the mail. You also get options to move the mail in other bundles, send to trash. There’s a dedicated section for pinned emails and reminders which can be accessed by turning the switch to the right in the action bar.
Inbox not only lets you send and receive mails, but it also lets you do extra things and more importantly, it shows you the things you really want to see. It smartly categorises all your mails so you can quickly get to the things which are similar. Ability to add reminders is an extra feature which I think is useful for many users. You can pin important mails and reminders.
On swiping towards right, you get a navigation menu. Through navigation menu, you can go to “Snoozed” section which lists all the snoozed mails and reminders and “Done” section which lists all the mails which are archived. You can also access all the other sections and bundles from the navigation menu.
Sending a mail is very easy in Inbox, you just need to tap the “Create” button and it will show you a list of recent contacts with their photo and their name. After selecting a contact, you just need to type the Subject and the mail and hit the send button.
Overall, I really liked the app and the way it works, and in fact it already replaced the Gmail app for me. The app is minimal in looks as it shows only relevant information on each screen. If you’re looking for an app to keep your Inbox at zero, Inbox app is the one which can help you as it helped me too. Also, you can access your Inbox from your browser at inbox.google.com. But the bad thing is that the web app can only be accessed on Google Chrome. This is very disappointing for a user like me who use Safari as the primary browser.
Google Inbox is available for iOS and Android.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bzNTjpUMOp4