Google Refreshes Gmail for Mobile, Makes It ‘Sharper and Smoother’

Google has just updated the Gmail Mobile for those mobile phone users who are still not into the Android platform.

Yes, that's right, Android smartphone owners have the pleasure to work with a state of the art Gmail client, but other mobile phone users are not so fortunate.

Well, that is until today, as Google decided to make things smoother and sharper for those who often rely on the mobile web to retrieve their messages.

The recent update is aimed at iPhone users mainly, but other mobile phone users can find the changes quite welcome.

In the past weeks, Google's mobile team released a series of updates, which were meant to make Gmail for Mobile look sharper and feel smoother.

The latest update also introduces a few functionality improvements, like the ability to pull down to refresh the message list and conversation on all iOS and Playbook devices.

Basically, users will only need to touch the message list, drag it downwards and then release it to refresh the message list.

When it comes to graphics, Google redesigned the icons at a higher resolution, which means that the Gmail for Mobile displayed on an iPhone 4 Retina screen is now extremely sharper.

Another interesting change added is the “transitions” features that got smoother and easier to user.

So, when tapping on a conversation, simply tap back to the inbox, go to the menu or go back, the view will slide left or right.

The newly introduced transition animation is a quick, small indication that makes the view change feel smoother.

To update to the latest version of Gmail for Mobile, simply go to mail.google.com using the browser of your mobile phone and check out for the update.

On related news, Google also unveiled the method that it used to implement these features, especially for curious web designers.

According to Google, the devs used a combination of up to eight different CSS3 transitions and Javascript.