I’m not sure this is what they meant when they said design is now mobile first. Google has taken the widely-loved new look in its iPhone and iPad app straight to the web — the mobile web, that is.

The new look is clean and simple, and much more usable — in my humble opinion — than Gmail’s web app for mail.

But not just mine:

“Much more usable now,” engineering student Filipe Werneck said. “And I must say that the redesign of the web app is very welcome and brings color consistency between desktop and mobile.”

But you can’t please everyone, apparently.

Windows Phone is not included in the release, probably because the Windows Phone browser is based on the Trident rendering engine and just about everyone else (Android, iOS, Opera) is on or moving towards the Webkit rendering engine. But it means that Windows Phone users are forced to use WAP to access Gmail in a browser on their devices — a very 1997 experience.

Other complaints include that Microsoft Exchange support was dropped (old news), and yet another responder to Google’s announcement post said “yeah, but the Contacts page still looks like it was developed by Fred Flintstone.”

Visit gmail.com in a mobile browser on your iPhone, Android smartphone, BlackBerry, or even a Kindle to check it out.

photo credit: opacity via photopin cc

Filed under: Business, Dev, Mobile, Social, VentureBeat

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