Gmail 5.0 (Material Design Update) is here!

02 Nov 2014 android · material-design

Well, Gmail 5.0, was probably the one release of Gmail, which I was most eager for. Before this, almost always, the updates have been merely “behind the scenes”. Slight bug-fixes, fixing crashes etc. But this was different, this brought on a totally new and fresh material design template to the one app on Android which I used the most!

For the past few days, there have been many updates for the Google apps on my Nexus 7, and all of them have been updated with the Material Design guidelines, and now, Google+ actually makes sense. I have been using it often to check out articles and stuff shared by Coursera, and other such firms, but basically, I am kinda hooked on to Google+. For the first time since it was launched, G+ is fun to use.

From the time it was launched, G+ had always been super cool and super fast, far faster than Facebook, and it had a very fresh design, the cards, the comments being toggled all the time, and the best transition animations, ensured that it was fun to use, but without a lot of friends on it, and a confusing “add to circles” button, where you didn’t really understand if you were doing the Facebook FR or the Twitter Follow, made it tough to use and understand.

Today, adding to circles has been pushed to the background, following is here, as usual! And of course, the concept of friends hasn’t really been picked up, but I think the add to circles button is making sense to many more people after the recent update.

Coming back to Gmail, one of the things that is very good on the new Gmail app, is the interface for Tablets, essentially, the difference between the interfaces for phones and tablets. This time, even the portrait app is different for tablets and phones. In the portrait app for tablets, an extra column ensures that you have a look at the three tabs (Forums, Social, Promotions etc) right at your fingertips.

And the landscape view is just “Beautiful”.

The landscape and portrait views for the 4.5” screen on my phone are the same. And pretty plain, much like the previous Gmail Version.

These are real images, shot from the app itself.

You can find the APK for this app here. The APK has been signed by Google, Inc.