Gmail Management App 'Mailbox' Gains iPad Compatibility

Popular email app Mailbox, which launched for iPhone in early February with a reservation system that saw well over one million users sign up before the company eliminated reservations last month, has now gone universal with a native interface for the iPad.

ReadWrite has more on the development, including a brief interview with Mailbox founder Gentry Underwood about how designing for the larger tablet screen was actually more difficult than for the iPhone.

"[Tablets] are these weird hybrid devices that sit in between," said Underwood. "They're part luxury mobile phone, and they're part makeshift desktop experience."

That made it harder, not easier, he said.

"Constraint is the friend of design," Underwood said. "It's easier for us to create a simple mail experience [for the phone]. We have to resist the temptation to take all these pixels and put in all these bells and whistles."

Mailbox is currently compatible only with Gmail, allowing users to intuitively triage their incoming mail through a simple swipe system supporting delete, archive, and a "snooze" function that dismisses email for the time being before reappearing to be dealt with.

The Mailbox team, which is now part of Dropbox, is also moving forward with plans to develop and Android version of its app, but no details on that effort have yet been released.

Mailbox is a free app available in the App Store. [Direct Link]