Aug

[New App] 'Gmail Canned Responses' Brings The Desktop Functionality Of The Same Name To Your Mobile Device

Posted by Cameron Summerson in Applications, News

Anyone who sends out Gmail messages containing the same body text over and over again knows how taxing that can be. Fortunately, there's a great feature in Labs called Canned Responses to help combat this issue by offering the ability to have pre-built responses directly within the compose window.

Let's say, for example, you're out of town and won't be able to respond to most email in a timely manner, but don't want to set an away notice so everyone gets the same response. In that case, you could have several different canned responses ready to go for different purposes. If a client or partner emails, then you could have an appropriate, professional message ready to go.

Aug

Gmail App Updated To v4.1.2, Brings Better Support For 7" Tablets And Performance Improvements

Posted by Cameron Summerson in Applications, News

Google just pushed an update v4.1.2 to the Gmail app (up from 4.1.1 and 4.0.5) that brings a few enhancements to Android 4.0+ devices, including improved support for 7" tablets. The full changelog for this update reads as follows:

Android 4.0 (ICS) and up:
- Improved 7" support
- Bug fixes and performance improvements

At first blush there don't appear to be any visual alterations, so we'll just assume that most of these enhancements take place under the hood.

Looks like Google left part of the old changelog in place with this update, as Android 2.2+ received the labels API several months ago.

Jul

Getting To Know Android 4.1, Part 2: The Glorious New Notifications

Posted by Ron Amadeo in Features, Getting To Know Android, Jelly Bean 4.1, News

Last Updated: August 10th, 2012

Hello and welcome to round 2 of Getting To Know Android 4.1. If you missed the inaugural episode (about the lock screen, software buttons, and icons) you can catch a rerun right here. And if you did see it, I suggest you go look at it again, because I updated it with a crazy menu button bug. Seriously, go look. I'll wait.

Today we're getting into something a little more meaty: The revamped notifications system! And we aren't doing some wimpy overview, we're sticking everything I can find under the GTKA microscope. First up, the fresh, new design:

Design

Just look at that, everything is different.

Jul

Jelly Bean Bumps Contact Photos To Hi-Res 720x720 But Google Sync Continues To Clobber It With Low-Res Mush

Posted by Artem Russakovskii in Jelly Bean 4.1, News

One of the most starred Android issues of all time, currently #20 of 21363 from the top with 1191 stars, is the absolutely awful quality of synced contact photos (issue #3870, opened in 2009). ICS attempted to resolve the issue by bumping the quality to 256x256 pixels, but Google sync would without mercy squash it right back down to blurry pixel dirt (96x96).

To recap, there are actually a couple of issues:

Contact photos set in Gmail.com are downsized to 96x96. That continues to be the case, and this isn't really even an Android problem - it's up to the Gmail team to fix it.

Apr

Gmail App Updated In The Play Store, Brings ICS Features To Honeycomb Tablets

Posted by Cameron Summerson in Applications, News

An update to the Gmail app just hit the Play Store that brings a number of smaller-ish features, most of which are for Honeycomb tablets. The app now offers some of the benefits of ICS on its older brother:

Android 3.2 (Honeycomb) users get the Android Gmail 4.0 (ICS) experience with:

Swipe to move between newer and older conversations

Tap your account to access Recent labels

Set custom notifications for individual labels

Sync last 30 days of messages so you can read and search messages faster both online and offline

It also brings some minor changes for users on Froyo or Gingerbread:

Android 2.2 (Froyo) and 2.3 (Gingerbread) users get:

New Labels API for 3rd-party app developers

Performance improvements

The update is live in the Play Store right now, so go ahead and pull it down to enjoy the new features!

Mar

[Review] CloudMagic Offers Lightning Fast Searches Of Gmail, Docs, Twitter, And More

Posted by Ryan Whitwam in App Reviews, Applications, Apps/Games, Reviews

Search has always been a big part of Android, and for many things, Google's built-in solution works fine. If you're looking for a better way to search through your data in the cloud, look no further than CloudMagic. The app does take a bit of setup, but once you're in, CloudMagic assists you in digging through your data in a very compelling way.

Setting Up CloudMagic

CloudMagic does not just exist on your phone. This is a service that you are granting access to your data, and it requires you to create an account to manage all those connections. After you get logged into CloudMagic itself, you have to add your services.

Jan

[Updated x3] Download: New 'Experiments' Gmail Feature Shows Up In Android 4.0.3 - Here's How To Get it On Your Android 4.0+ Device

Posted by Cameron Summerson in Applications, Ice Cream Sandwich 4.0, News

It has been two weeks since Android 4.0.3 started rolling out to the Transformer Prime, which made it the first tablet to officially receive the update. With a new version of Android, be it incremental or not, comes new and improved GApps, most of which we've already taken a close look at.

In Android 4.0.3, however, a new Gmail feature has been uncovered by ComputerWorld that is noticeably missing in its 4.0.2 brother: experiments. Sounds dangerous, no?

As you can see, these "experiments" is really just a couple of useful options that someone at Google probably deemed "worth including, but not entirely stable."

The first option, Enter full text search, is pretty self explanatory - it indexes full messages, which allows you to search through all of the text for keywords; a useful feature indeed.

Dec

Love Using Facebook On-The-Go? You're Not The Only One - According To Nielsen, It's The Most Launched Android App (Save For The Market, That Is)

Posted by Cameron Summerson in Applications, News

Ready to hear some oh-so shocking news? Okay, here it comes - Facebook is the most launched app on Android. Well, if you want to get technical about it, Facebook isn't really the most launched app - it actually shows up in the list right behind the Android Market, but considering the Market is the gateway to all other apps (including Facebook, in most cases), it's pretty safe to omit it.

Research firm Nielsen recently dug deep to find which Android apps were launched most often between three different age groups: 18-24, 25-34, and 35-44. Facebook took the number one spot across the board, but the similarities between the three groups end there.

Dec

Google Voice Calls To The U.S. And Canada To Remain Free Until The End Of 2012

Posted by Brandon Lancaster in Applications, News

While the Google Voice app has always been free, there was speculation that voice calls to the United States and Canada would begin to cost you money at the beginning of next year. However, new Google Voice users are being greeted by a pop-up window when they first use the Call Phone feature in Gmail that indicates otherwise.

See there? Calls to the U.S. and Canada are free in 2012. If there is anything I love more than free voice calling, it's another year of entirely free calling through Google Voice. And to think...several years ago people were feeding money to machines at gas stations just to make phone calls.

Oct

[Getting To Know Android 4.0, Part 1] Gmail: Android's Most Important App

Posted by Ron Amadeo in Applications, Features, Getting To Know Android, Ice Cream Sandwich 4.0

Last Updated: August 10th, 2012

For many people, Gmail is Android's killer app. It's the best email app on any platform, and one of the biggest draws to Android. So anytime there is a change, it's pretty big news. With Ice Cream Sandwich, Gmail got a huge revamp. Every inch of the app has changed. Today we're going to find out just what is so different.

I'm sure you've read other articles on the new ICS apps, but those are just rehashing what was shown in the Hong Kong demo. With the recent system apps dump and some SDK shenanigans, we can sit down with a real, working version of Gmail 4.0 and uncover its secrets.