Android 4.0 is nice and all, but as of April, 2012 fewer than 3 percent of Android phone and tablet users have the latest version of Google’s mobile operating system. So Google is updating some of its core Android apps to bring a taste of Android 4.0 to earlier versions of Android.
Gmail 2.3.6 hit the Google Play Store today, and it adds the following features for Android 3.2 users:
- Sync the last 30 days of messages for offline reading (and faster online viewing)
- Swipe to move between new and old conversations
- Tap on your account to see recent labels
- Set custom notifications for specific labels
Up until recently those features were only available in Android 4.0 and up.
If you’re using Android 2.2 or Android 2.3 the update also provides performance improvements and a new API for third party developers that want to access Gmail labels in their apps.
