Android Gmail app gets welcome enhancements

There's nothing especially revolutionary about the updates to Google's Gmail app for Android, but as Phandroid puts it, "there’s a new version of the Gmail app in the Android Market, and it comes with a slew of improvements...that email geeks will love and the rest of the world maybe slightly nod at, if that."

I happen to be one of those emails geeks and this latest round of enhancements (following Google's separation of Gmail from Android this fall) is a welcome refinement of the interface. The changes bring the Android app closer to feature parity with the desktop browser version of Google's flagship email product. Adding obvious priority inbox markers, new abilities to reply/reply to all/forward from the same screen, and reply inline to messages just makes the product easier to use, especially for desktop users.

The app also allows users to specify the account from which they want to send/reply if they manage multiple accounts with their Gmail. Google's blog post on the new release points out,

"If you moved to Gmail from another webmail provider and want to continue to send email from that address, now you can send from any address you’ve configured in the desktop version of Gmail."

The Google Mobile Blog has several shots of the new UI, including the reply to all integration and inline replies.

The app is only available for Android 2.2 and you can get it (if you weren't already updated automatically) by scanning this QR code from your phone.