Since Mailbox will be sunset in a couple of months, I am looking for an alternate iOS email client.
One of the must-have features that I needed was the possibility to snooze emails, which became an important part of my email workflow.
Right now I am evaluating Inbox by Gmail and here are the first impressions after more than one week of using it.
Pros
– snooze to location
– integrated reminders (with snooze functionality)
– undo action
– nice compose interface
– as expected, excellent search functionality
– auto responses
Cons
– even after disabling the bundles, it still puts certain emails in the Google Plus circles, skipping the inbox
– the ‘Snooze until…’ interface has a lot of room for improvement, I almost always have to tap more times until I find the right time/place
– the ‘pin’ functionality is useless
– swiping a snoozed email archives it instead of putting it in the inbox as expected (this is related to the previous remark)
– boring interface when you reach Inbox-0, no incentive to get there nor the possibility to customize
– bundles enabled by default, but that can be easily disabled
Written by Dorin Moise (Published articles: 272)
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Comments (5)
Swiping in Inbox is used to mark as done or trash, so swiping a soozed email should archive it, not put it the inbox.
I also have no idea what you mean by this comment “even after disabling the bundles, it still puts certain emails in the Google Plus circles, skipping the inbox”
Hi Scott,
Thanks for your reply.
In my mind swiping an email from the ‘Inbox’ section should be different from swiping an email from ‘Snoozed’ section. The first swipe should indeed archive the item (or mark it as done, as you call it). But swiping from Snoozed is most probably done because you want to deal with the item – so putting it back to inbox is more inline with the principle of least surprise.
I am probably still stuck in the Mailbox mindset, where on top of the mechanism above you also had short and long swipe.
About the other issue – I uploaded a screenshot at the end of the post. Basically I had an email that the app placed directly in the Google Circles / Photo section without sending me any notification about that. I only noticed it by accident.
To have different results for swiping depending upon what bundle you are in would be extremely confusing for users. To put something back in the Inbox, just click on the check mark.
There is no G+ Circles bundle in Inbox, only in classic Gmail and if it is in the G+ circles label, it should be in another label as well. Where in Inbox did you find the email?
For me Snoozed items is not a bundle. It’s much more than that, and I think it could justify a separate option somewhere in the settings (Swiping from Snoozed)
“To put something back in the Inbox, just click on the check mark.” I think you mean the pin 🙂
Anyway, it seems to me like Inbox is still struggling to find its place and it’s still a bit of work in progress. If things were more simple, comparative tables like these would not exist:
http://www.scottgreenstone.com/2015/01/inbox-common-actions-between-gmail-and.html
About snooze options: I just read your post http://www.scottgreenstone.com/2015/10/customsnooze.html – is there any plan to adjust the swiping options in the future releases?
About your last question ‘Where in Inbox did you find the email?’ – that’s exactly the problem: that email never showed up in Inbox for iOS. I only saw it accidentally using GMail in browser, where I am able to see all the labels. And it was not comfortable to see that I had unread email that I was unaware of.