Gmail is the most used feature on my Android phone. For years I have wanted instant access to my email, but this is the first phone I have used that supports Gmail. At first, I was put off by the interface because it was different from my desktop. After I used it for a few months, it began to grow on me. Now that I am comfortable with all the features offered, there are a few things missing I need to point out.
1. No Multiple From Field. I use my main Gmail account to manager several others. I often receive emails from my other accounts that I wish to reply to, but I’m only offered the default email. This is major annoying and I hope a high priority.
Limited Sync Options
2. Select Multiple Emails. In the web version of Gmail, you can select multiple emails at once to perform a single action on them. For example, I sometimes mark a group of emails as read or move several emails to a folder at the same time. This would not be hard to implement in Android and I want to see it.
3. Improved Home Screen. I have a lot of custom filters and folders setup on my web Gmail. When I login, I can instantly see what new emails are waiting for me in different folders and accounts. On Android, I have to hit menu to browse lables and then drill down. It would be nice to have an improved home screen that display more information. A simple top row that display stats would be great.
4. Fix Sync Problems. Often when I view my folders, it says I have “-1″ or “1″ unread emails when there is nothing new in the folder. Emails sometimes get stuck in the draft folder. Other times, emails will not send at all. I have a lot of problems when I attempt to send an email to myself. I’m also dissappointed with the sync options for each folder; its either 4 days or all.
5. Download Attachments. Why can’t I download certain attachments? If I can download the file on my pc, then I want to be able to download it on my Android. I do not want any restrictions place on my downloads.
Gmail Labels
6. Attachments Preview. Also related to attacments are document previews. Most documents will not preview on Android. If you attempt to preview certain docs, then Gmail will force close. I would like to see the same functionality of the web client.
7. Label Options. When you have a lot of email to keep track of, labels are very useful. I tag most of my emails and I like that Android will allow you to select multiple tags. We are still missing some options though such as the ability to create, rename, or remove a label.
What bugs annoy you most? Are there any features you found lacking? What fix is your top priority?
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Taylor Wimberly
Taylor is the founder of Android and Me. He loves playing with all kinds of gadgets, but most importantly cell phones. His other hobbies include cooking (BBQ hero!), politics, football, and watching every MMA event possible.
31 Comments
Well this is sort of a complaint about Gmail and the Google browser. Try to click any email link which contains a subject line in it and Gmail will automatically change the email address to an @gmail.com address.
For example, go to Craigslist and try to respond to a posting by clicking the serv3939@craigslist.org email and gmail will open up and have serv3939@gmail.com as the address your email will go to.
This is not an error, this is insanity. It has bothered me since day one and not a thing has been done to correct it.
Other than that, I pretty much adore this phone and say nice sweet things to it every night before I got to bed because I am afraid it may decide to go live on its own if I am not nice to it. Its much smarter than me.
Well, I think colored labels are very helpful.
On your list point 1 is the most annoying for me as well.
I switched from Gmail the app to the Gmail web interface because the app was stupid and klunky and sucked major bandwidth and was using 10M (!) of precious storage space. I find the web interface to be very slick & friendly on the Android browser.
Ahh!
How could you NOT mention it’s terrible quoting of previous text when replying? It flat out DOESN’T work. Sending e-mails from my G1 to existing threads leaves a mountain of text below that Gmail doesn’t automatically condense down. The result is a giant e-mail.
And on top of that, why can’t I reply to an e-mail and just remove the quoted text (Seeing as how Gmail can’t handle condensing it when sent from gmail on Android)?
This is my biggest complaint as well, I can’t reply to mailing lists, why not just let us edit the whole body text, surely that would have been -easier- to do?!
Absolute priority for me would be the ability to send attachments other than pictures. At the moment, the only way this can be done at all on Android (AFAICT) is to rename the file to end in .jpg and put it in the pictures folder – a bizarre hoop to jump through to get around an arbitrary restriction that I hope they remove soon.
Another thing that annoys me slightly is that if my phone goes to sleep when I have a mail open then when a new email arrives there won’t be an icon in the status bar, and I quite often don’t notice I’ve had a new mail because of this.
Apart from that I’m quite happy with it though, it’s a nice interface to use.
i've had 3 messages "stuck" in my phone's Gmail outbox for months now. I was hoping RC33 would have fixed it… but no dice. Annoying!!
AHHHHH I hate the stuck messages. I played around with my phone a lot today trying to get the stupid 1 to clear my outbox.
I finally figured out how to change the number of days it syncs, but its 1 setting for all folders. I wish you could have different sync lvls for each folder.
I like your 7 which I think you picked out of hundreds.
How about this being my NUMBER ONE:
Gmail on Andriod DOES NOT SHOW PICTURES within the EMAIL!
how wrong is that? let that be your number one.
Just wanted to say that i completely agree with your number 1. I have a stupidly named gmail account because all the good names were taken and i want to be able to send business emails as if they originated from my business email account. Which i can do from my laptop so why not from my g1? Whoever’s in charge: please make this your top priority.
Thanx, j
I gotta vote with #2. Sometimes I check this email from POP, and so it doesn’t get marked as read on gmail. I end up with all these “new” emails I can’t easily mark as read.
My biggest android gmail complaint is not being able to physically delete emails and spam from my g1 , rather then having to log into the web gmail or from my pc and delete them again. And I agree need to be able to create labels.
My biggest android gmail complaint is not being able to physically delete emails and spam from my g1 , rather then having to log into the web gmail or from my pc and delete them again. And I agree need to be able to create labels.
i am mohmmed ilyas i am daily cheking my mail in gmail account before 8 days i not open my account i have important my mail so give any suggetion for open my gmail .my another account ilyas_ahmed6@yahoo.com
My complaint is that I get ads related to the content of my email..and I am pretty irritated about Gmail. Yahoo is not like that. I am wondering whether they are scanning my email content…pretty annoying and scary.
I’m trying out Android for the first time and haven’t been able to figure out a way to set up multiple accounts. I read online that a 3rd party app (E-Mail and maybe others) will allow this. Either way, I would add this as a complaint, and something for the future…
How do you delete some stuck email from the Gmail outbox? No one seems to know what to do…
Yup definitely # 5
To open an attachment you need to have an app that can open it.
If you get Astro, it will just tell Android it can open everything so you should be able to receive whatever you want.
how do you even change emails?
I find it really irritating that I cant go from one message to the next (or previous) within the message? It’s annoying to have to go back to the inbox/current folder to see the prev/next message.
The weird thing is their application for other emails has this… Do others not find this annoying or am I stupid and can’t find the arrows?
I just started useing a Motorola Cliq and noticed that I am unable to forward emails to addresses if I have to insert an underscore _ as in email_address@company.com
Inserting the underscore appends the suffix @ gmail.com, then the _@gmail.com
The result is…
, ,
The workaround is to add the email address into the contact list, what gives, no underscores?
My Droid only has the inbox, no outbox/folders and does not sync e-mails sent from the phone. The web interface is great, is the gmail app the same for everyone or did it configure incorrectly?
If you change your contacts in web version and it have a camera photo include, it will be lost the next time you sync.
It Suck!
Not being able to easily switch primary gmail account
Embedded JPEG pictures are just blank spaces. On the email and no way to open them …I use a gmail account on my new Droid with verison
. Many other type attachments act the same way. No such problems on my PC. This makes the Droid worthless. For email
.
It bugs me that there is no unread message count besides inside the app itself. You can make shortcuts to each label, which is nice, but i wish it would show the amount of unread emails over the label shortcut. or the Gmail shortcut itself.
Agree not seeing pictures in gmail sucks
While all of these complaints have merit, I would have to say that the discard button’s prominence in the compose dialog is the single most frustrating thing about the Gmail app. I have “Discarded” far too many emails because I stopped in the middle of composing the email to do something else and accidentally hit discard. Why isn’t there some confirmation? More importantly why the heck is it there in the first place. It’s there even on the mobile web UI, but it’s smaller and at least they offer confirmation. Plus you can hit back and get right back to your email in the mobile web UI, but the app just destroys it instantly. Just plain stupid if you ask me.
Is it just my Hero or the app can’t load my gmail contacts when i type the first couple of letters in the TO: field?
Umm, does it expect me to memorize all my addresses?
I absolutly hate having to exit emails to read the previous/next one… unless there’s something I don’t know?!