Gmail News: Mobile App Now Sharper, Calling Expanded, New Labs Experiment
Here are three news related to the Google-developed email service, the appropriately named Gmail. The first news is that Gmail for mobile, the app that comes preinstalled on Android-powered devices and is available for other devices either as a native app or as a web app, has been updated. The latest version of Gmail for mobile comes with several new features that, as Mobile Software Engineer Daniel Brotherston out it, make the email service “look sharper and feel smoother.
Here are the new features Gmail for mobile has to offer:
Pull down to refresh – to refresh a message list and conversation when using Gmail for mobile on iOS and Playbook devices, all you have to do is touch the message list, drag downwards and release.
High resolution icons – if you access Gmail for mobile from an iPhone 4 with Retina display, you will notice that the icons and graphics are now at a higher resolution. This means that the icons now look sharper.
New transition animation – you will notice a new and quick transition animation when you tap on a conversation, tap back to the inbox, go to the menu or go back.
Moving on, the second news is that calling from Gmail has been expanded to additional countries. Back in 2010 Google integrated Google Voice in Gmail and gave users in the good old US of A the option to call phone numbers in the US and Canada from within Gmail. Earlier this week Google announced that the “make calls from within Gmail” functionality has been expanded to cover 38 new languages.
US users will continue to be able to make calls from Gmail free of charge – as long as they call other US users or users in Canada. Calls to the US and Canada will be charged $0.01 per minute (or €0.01, £0.01, C$0.01 per minute). Calls from the US to France, Germany or the UK are $0.10 (or €0.08) per minute if you call a mobile phone and $0.02/min if you call a landline phone. Calls from the US to mobile phones in Mexico cost $0.15/minute while calls to any phone numbers in China and India cost $0.02/min. Additional information on how much it costs to call someone from within Gmail is available here .
The third and final news in this article is that there's a new experiment available in Gmail Labs. The experiment in question is called “Preview Pane”; it allows you to preview messages in your inbox. Once you enable the experiment a toggle button will show up in the top right hand corner of the message list; you can use the button to switch between preview and list views.
Here are the new features Gmail for mobile has to offer:
Pull down to refresh – to refresh a message list and conversation when using Gmail for mobile on iOS and Playbook devices, all you have to do is touch the message list, drag downwards and release.
High resolution icons – if you access Gmail for mobile from an iPhone 4 with Retina display, you will notice that the icons and graphics are now at a higher resolution. This means that the icons now look sharper.
New transition animation – you will notice a new and quick transition animation when you tap on a conversation, tap back to the inbox, go to the menu or go back.
Moving on, the second news is that calling from Gmail has been expanded to additional countries. Back in 2010 Google integrated Google Voice in Gmail and gave users in the good old US of A the option to call phone numbers in the US and Canada from within Gmail. Earlier this week Google announced that the “make calls from within Gmail” functionality has been expanded to cover 38 new languages.
US users will continue to be able to make calls from Gmail free of charge – as long as they call other US users or users in Canada. Calls to the US and Canada will be charged $0.01 per minute (or €0.01, £0.01, C$0.01 per minute). Calls from the US to France, Germany or the UK are $0.10 (or €0.08) per minute if you call a mobile phone and $0.02/min if you call a landline phone. Calls from the US to mobile phones in Mexico cost $0.15/minute while calls to any phone numbers in China and India cost $0.02/min. Additional information on how much it costs to call someone from within Gmail is available here .
The third and final news in this article is that there's a new experiment available in Gmail Labs. The experiment in question is called “Preview Pane”; it allows you to preview messages in your inbox. Once you enable the experiment a toggle button will show up in the top right hand corner of the message list; you can use the button to switch between preview and list views.
