This isn’t exactly the launch of Google Maps for iOS, but Google just updated Gmail for iOS, which now supports the iPhone 5’s elongated 4-inch display. Instead of seeing black bars at the top and bottom of the app, iPhone 5 users will now be able to see a bit more of their inboxes on their phones now.
Gmail is obviously an application that greatly benefits from the extra screen estate. Nevertheless, it took Google a while to update the app, even though the company had already released updates for both its Chrome browser and Google Drive. It’s worth noting, though, that the Gmail app had a few other issues on iOS 6, the only version of iOS that runs on the iPhone 5. Google probably wanted to fix these bugs before releasing this new version.
When Google first launched Gmail for iOS, the launch was somewhat of a disaster, as the app didn’t actually work. Since then, though, Google has offered regular updates and slowly added a few more features to the app, including, for example, the ability to open links in Chrome for iOS. What’s still missing, though, is support for multiple accounts, something users have been asking for ever since the app first launched.
Sparrow, the popular iOS email client that Google acquired in July, has officially been put into maintenance mode. And even though the app won’t get any major feature updates, the developer recently said it will be updated to include support for the iPhone 5’s larger screen.
If you use Gmail on the iPhone but prefer Apple’s own mail app, by the way, also take a look at yesterday’s announcement regarding Google’s support for CardDAV, which now makes it a lot easier to sync your Google Contacts with Apple’s native iOS Contacts app.